Why intention is everything

It's not what you do as much as why you do it

Eight years ago, almost exactly around this time of year, Oscar Pistorius became international headlines for a shooting that killed his girlfriend. Oscar was a 26-year-old, white, male, South African, double amputee, Paralympic gold medalist. Reeva Steenkamp, his girlfriend, was a model — tall, blonde, gorgeous — with a law degree. Together, they were a good looking pair who were seen at red carpet events together. And she didn’t look like she was doing him a favour by going out with him. They really looked happy.

Oscar does not fit the profile in most of our heads of “murderer.” The man didn’t have legs. If anything, at first glance he’s a success story of overcoming disability. After the lower part of his legs were amputated when he was a baby, Oscar became known as the “Blade Runner” for the carbon-fibre prostheses he used, reaching the peak of his career when he participated in the 2012 Olympics in London. He was the first person with his condition to do this. He was a national hero.

Some people argued the shooting was a Valentine’s Day surprise which went awry. It was an accident. Oscar had fired four shots through a locked bathroom door, the bullets hitting Reeva, who was on the other side, in the head and arm. Oscar said he thought she was an intruder. He wasn’t wearing his prostheses at the time of the incident and walked in court during the trial to demonstrate his vulnerability without them. Prosecutors say the couple had a fight about Oscar’s jealousy of a former boyfriend and Reeva had barricaded herself in the bathroom. He first tried to break the door down with a cricket bat and when that didn’t work, he used a 9mm weapon at point-blank range.

Historically, it has never been easy to convince juries or the public of a “likeable” powerful man to pay for a crime against a woman. Complicating this case further, a highly respected judge who was only the second black woman in the country to occupy the position (she had qualified while attending night school for ten years, raising two children and working full-time), acquitted Oscar of murder but found him guilty on two other counts. The following year, the verdict was appealed and overturned. Oscar is now serving the minimum time for murder in South Africa of 15 years, minus jail time he has previously served.

Oscar was jailed based on a specific part of South African law called dolus eventualis which is a Latin term that means foreseeing the possible risks of your actions — and continuing anyway. In other words, to behave with recklessness. This changed his crime from manslaughter (killing without malice) to murder.

With dolus eventualis applied to this case, the debate was whether Oscar should have known that if he fired four times into a small, closed space like a bathroom, anyone in there, whether Reeva or not, would have died and did he shoot anyway?

Intent.

South Africa’s Supreme Court unanimously decided he did.

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I’ve thought a lot about intention and why it’s so important to do everything you do “for the right reasons”, the specifics of what you do almost being irrelevant. As humans, we are fundamentally flawed. We all want to be better, be the best version of ourselves. In reality, we’re also prone to jealousy, pettiness, spite. We’ll justify the parts we don’t want to accept to ourselves with long-winded explanations. But if we drown out the noise, when all the guests have cleared out and it’s just us sitting with our deepest thoughts and insecurities, we know the real reason why.

We always know.

And this is not something you can fake, despite your best efforts, however skilful you think you are, how much ever you might try to convince yourself otherwise or hide it from view — the real reason why you do what you do is always painfully, plainly clear. In fact, the harder you push against this, the clarity becomes starker. There may even be a point when you can no longer see your truth but to everyone else, it’s a case of The Emperor’s New Clothes.

I suppose intention is intimately tied with karma…but I’m not about to get philosophical. I’m just fascinated that something only you can know in your heart of hearts can have such a profound impact on everything you do. This probably explains why acting in rage or resentment has never worked for anyone. Why there are lines in holy books discouraging righteous behaviour if done in the spirit of “to be seen by men.” Why no woman ever who has tried to get a better haircut than her ex-boyfriend’s current girlfriend has ever been happy with it. But every woman who got a dramatic new haircut following a breakup just because she needed a change or just to show herself some TLC — has. Even if her regular stylist wasn’t in that day. Even if she tried a style that wasn’t recommended for her face shape. Sometimes, even if she did it herself standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a pair of scissors.

Intent.

In Urdu, intention is called “niyath” (pronounced NEE-yath) and I’ve come to believe that if your niyath is pure, clean, even if your actions are less than best, things will eventually work in your favour. The reverse is also true. None of this is absolute. It’s just a theory.

But I see it play out more in public life. In 2015, England and Wales recognised “coercive and controlling behaviour” as a form of domestic abuse, becoming the first countries in the world to make this a punishable criminal offence. This is groundbreaking for the standard it sets. I’m almost positive that every domestic abuse survivor you speak to will say “control” was a primary intention of the perpetrator. In 2019, Ireland and Scotland introduced coercive control laws too.

A few days ago, I read in an edition of The New York Times newsletter with the subject line, “Covid absolutism” that in a public health emergency (like the global pandemic we are currently living through), "absolutism is a very tempting response: People should cease all behaviour that creates additional risk.” This was being discussed in the context of new restrictions imposed in different places. The University of California, Berkeley has banned all outdoor exercise, whether you’re wearing a mask or not. The University of Massachusetts Amherst has banned outdoor walks. Every night, the New York City subway system is being closed for a deep clean.

These measures have been picked apart really intelligently (you can read the whole thing here) for how useful/effective they are but the line that really stood out to me was, “Rules that are really more about showing that you’re doing something versus doing something that’s actually effective” are counterproductive, said by Julia Marcus, an epidemiologist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

Intent.

It’s a funny thing, this intention. And it’s certainly not an easy one to always get right. But I’ve been thinking a lot about “aligning intention with action” and all the ways in which this can change my life. Of how the more I do this, the more I “exercise this muscle”, the better I’m likely to become at it. Of how doing this can bring me closer to living my most authentic life as my most authentic self.

I have some ways to go as this is a work in progress, I’ve learnt. I hope to see you on the way. We can stop to enjoy a snack together and have a conversation about how far we’ve both come.

Until next week,

xx

AA