May 22, 2007
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The Right Thing
I watched Letters From Iwo Jima today and if there's anything that I realized from it, it's that doing the right thing can mean completely different things to different people. Even those of us who were raised with similar backgrounds, in similar cultures, with similar values can come to believe in vastly differing perspectives on some of the most fundamental issues that drive our motivations in life. What exactly is the right thing? When you're faced with a dilemma with no clear solution, with no clear answer, with no stark black and white contrast to serve as an obvious guide, how do you know what path is the right one?
To believe that there is only one true, good path through life ignores how we all have different wants, desires, and hearts. There is no universally true path, only the path that's best for you. As we walk through life, the best we can do is to be true to ourselves and make those choices that are true to what we believe and what we really want. Therein, however, lies our real problems. Many of us scarcely examine ourselves deeply or frequently enough to know what lies in our hearts, or to truly know the real nature of ourselves and our personality. It's a difficult, frightening thing to take the time to really examine yourself and your motivations, your upbringing, your history, your personality. What lurks within isn't always rainbows and sunshine, but rather a mixed bag of both good and bad, of fond memories and frightening demons, all of which can threaten to overcome and consume you if you give in to your fear.
Knowing yourself, however, is the only way to know what's truly the right thing to do for you and what the best path to walk through your life might be. What's the right thing? Discovering that is a journey in and of itself, but once you know your own truth and the reality of your own heart, then no one will ever be able to take that feeling away from you of finally being at peace with who you are.
Some people call it being complete, but I think that truly, we are never really incomplete.
We're just painfully aware of how don't face what lies within our hearts, and how true or untrue we are being to who we really are.
Comments (4)
thank you.
There is no universally true path, only the path that's best for you. As we walk through life, the best we can do is to be true to ourselves and make those choices that are true to what we believe and what we really want.
I wonder if that can be taken out of context. If we take out right/wrong, true/false, moral/not moral, it strikes me that there are a lot of folks out there with a broken sense of what's appropriate. If we say that every path is okay, then every path is justifiable. Even the ones that go horribly bizarre.
Don't mind me. Charles Manson is up for parole review today. Yeah, that guy. I'm not sure I want him in my neighborhood when he's being true to himself.
All we can do is do our best and hope that God smiles upon it. Have a great weekend, man!
i wouldn't know. haven't done so for a while. tiredness.
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