June 13, 2007
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Change
I've always maintained that generally, it's usually much harder to do the right thing than it is to do the selfish thing. It takes hundreds of men thousands of hours of work to create a building, and yet the same building can be destroyed with as little as one person in just a few brief seconds. It can take hours, days, even weeks of hard work to create art, music, and writing, but only a few brief moments to ruin it. It takes months to build up a close friendship and a real trust, but only an instant to shatter it. In our quest to find fulfillment and gratification, we often think of doing good as stopping those who would destroy what already exists, but in doing so, are we not simply maintaining the status quo? Is it really so great and kind hearted to keep things the way they already exist? Truly doing good doesn't come just in stopping the bad, but also in creating those good things and giving of it willingly to others.
It's easy to destroy something. It's harder, but still not all too difficult to keep things as they are. The hardest thing you can do is to create something, and harder still to share it once you're finished. We're so conditioned to accept and find comfort in the familiar, that we make great efforts to keep things as they are, unchanging, never growing, because we fear what we do not know and the uncertainty of change drives us to resist what may even be beneficial. It's just that we wouldn't know it even if we saw it, because we're trying so hard to resist, to hold back, to deny it of ourselves. We measure so much by what we don't have, by what we don't do, by all the don'ts that we follow and try so hard to resist that we never stop to think that maybe life isn't about what you don't have, don't do, and don't own. Rarely do we actually measure a person based on what they haven't done. The measure of a person is on their actions and what they have done. You get no credit for resisting the urge to do something you know is wrong, but rather in choosing to do something you know is right.
"I think we can't go around measuring our goodness by what we don't do, by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include."
-Chocolat
Comments (4)
You're right. One of the challenges of aging is to resist the temptation to slip into "maintenance mode." Whether in our career or friendships, there is a pull to do just enough to get by. The result is that our jobs and relationships suffer because instead of growing and moving forward, we end up stuck in a rut. I hope that I can always be in a place where I will choose not only the right thing, but the thing that brings growth and empowerment to myself and those around me.
Right now, I'm going to take a nap. ha ha!
At this very moment in life, any subtle change is deadly to all my plans. I think that despite growth needing change, there is something as too much changes. That point may be inevitable, but, like it is for me right now, too much becomes perilous.
yeah, but its so much funner being selfish.
wow, Hikaru on MTV. weird.
Amen to that!
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