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There are other forms of trust at play, too. Collecting some lupins from the side of the road or snipping a posy of wild flowers from a field is all very well — these are nature’s string-free offerings. But gardens involve someone else’s time, labour and care. It may seem dashing to snap off a handy carnation and place it in the buttonhole of a bespoke jacket, as Cary Grant or Clifton Webb or George Sanders might’ve done, but this bespeaks more fantasy than propriety. (Notice how often those actors’ fashionable characters are cads as well as dandies.)

Anyway, you style your desire to snip your neighbours’ horticultural handiwork as a temptation. That answers your ethical question without delay: yes, this certainly is stealing; and no, you certainly shouldn’t do it. The lovingly nurtured beds and borders are already a positive externality — you enjoy them without cost as you stroll through the neighbourhood. Take that happy gift and walk on.

Or here’s a thought: direct your steps up to the neighbour’s door and knock. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship! After all, the right moment for day-seizing is always now, as the Cavalier poet Robert Herrick reminds us. “Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,” the lifelong bachelor wrote in 1648, in a poem ostensibly addressed to virgins. “Old Time is still a-flying; / And this same flower that smiles today / Tomorrow will be dying.” So carpe diem, virgin or not. Just ask the gardener first.

It’s hard to get a job these days, especially for young people. I’ve given out tons of resumés. I’ve also spoken to friends who have embellished theirs — sometimes a little, sometimes by omission and sometimes a lot. It seems like common practice, but I feel uncomfortable about it. How much embellishment is acceptable?

The harms of credential fraud, which is what you’re contemplating, range from embarrassing to life-threatening. Nobody is going to care very much if you list your secretarial job as “Executive Assistant,” say — though that’s still all kinds of bogus. But if you fake or fudge a medical degree or a board certification, as a recent nominee for United States surgeon general did, you could put lives at risk. Falsified qualifications are a form of what military veterans call “stolen valour.” They insult the virtuous even as they elevate the vicious.

Still, the temptation to bio-lie is strong — and growing. The global market for falsified degrees and diplomas was estimated at some $21 billion last year, and that’s just for recorded transactions. Ad hoc embellishments and untraceable, AI-driven CV boosts are likely far more widespread. These booming deception stakes might benefit individuals, but they hollow out already waning trust in institutions of accredited expertise, including science, medicine and law.

“But wait,” you might say, “I’m just adding a line about the French I don’t really speak and the Excel skills I don’t have. Who cares?” Sure, no big deal — only now the cover-up is worse than the crime. If you’re caught out, you could face demotion, termination or worse. Consider former U.S. congressman George Santos, the serial fabulist of athletic feats, educational accomplishments and cultural bona fides, who eventually landed in jail. In Canada, false claims of Indigenous identity have come back to haunt many prominent writers, jurists and academics in so-called Pretendian scandals. Those are the kinds of blots you can never remove from your bio.

But set all negative consequences to one side. As Immanuel Kant reminds us, the duty not to lie resides in its simply being wrong, as in contrary to reason. Tout your real achievements on that resumé, keep on sending it out in good faith and leave the lying to the crooks and the grifters. That way, when you do land a job, you’ll enjoy the double reward of knowing that what you have was earned honestly.