Being, Not Doing

And here’s what really trips me up: I’m not convinced you can clearly define good anyway. Snap shots can make good and bad appear simplistically separate, simplistically clear, but really, aren’t the two more often mixed up? Sometimes it’s the most awful things, the most ugly or evil or extraordinarily pathetic, that lead to positive action. Don’t they? Like figuring out tough class or race-related things in Katrina’s aftermath. Like wounded people turning into healers. Some of history’s biggest embarrassments have been the reason why myriad smaller tragedies haven’t happened, or have actually gotten cared about.

And sometimes it’s the most well-intentioned things ever – the ones dreamed up by people doggedly committed to making the world a better place – that really, really screw things up. Think manifest destiny. Think over-protective parenting. Think any number of technological “advances,” and the Hiroshimas and global warmings and massive oil spills pluming in their wakes.

So. What does it mean for me to “try to do good”? What do I presuppose in even asking such a question?

While I won’t try answering that, I will give my conclusion. You ready?

I know that “good” and “bad” are difficult to separate sometimes, and that the “good” I try to do may actually harm someone, or mess up something better. But I’m thinking that’s par for this messy life-course. And I’m certainly not excited about doing nothing because I convince myself that no matter what I do (or don't do, as the case may be) is part of life’s yin and yang.

So my conclusion? I want to try to do good in the world because that’s what I like to do. I like it. It makes me hopeful. I like it better than doing nothing, and I like it better than knowingly doing bad. And heck if I understand my complex mix of motives better than that.

[via [un]Veilings]