Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Deep Down

Do you sometimes doubt that deep down, you're a good person?

You know why? Because deep down, you're a bad person. Deep down, I think everybody is. The people we see are good people, it isn't because of their deep down. It is because they guide themselves with their way up. Their higher view of what they feel they can be. What they want to be, what they have a drive to be.

A good person. A good person in their own eyes.

And that belief - which is their belief in their own self-worth - that guiding faith in the self they are creating every day, is what enables them to create something good. Your self: is it what you "just are"? What you are intrinsically, when not making an effort? Just what you "are," laying back on your ass? No. It is not. Unless, of course, that is in fact what you aspire to be! It didn't have to be, but you choosing the path of to lie on your ass makes it so.

Your self is in fact what your self is in practice: what you are in action. Every day, actively, everyone is creating a self from the raw material they were born into, and from the roads they've chosen since. The raw material of physical form, with its biological surges and imperatives. The raw material of location and circumstance, that provide the setting, the experiential context - the frame, if you will. For good or ill, it is this self-creation, conscious or unconscious - the choices we make to act, the choices we make in how we see ourselves - this is what channels and directs and ultimately, overrides or wallows in what we are deep down. Because deep down, we are: drives, lusts, hungers. The need to lash out, to hurt what threatens. The need to flee from what looks like trouble. At any cost, the deep-seated reflex to save ourselves (from death, or maybe just from discomfort or inconvenience). Deep down, that's what we are. Deep down, we're all of that. Not good people. Not really. Deep down: animals.

If you are a good person, it is not because of what you are deep down. It is because you believe in yourself from way high up - in the best part there is of you. The part that sees what you are every day, the part that sees the worst and accepts it is there, but does not allow it to rule. The part that sees and chooses to believe in the best of what you are every day, of what you can be every day.

If you are a good person, it is because you act on that.

3 comments:

dogimo said...

Animals aren't bad, mind you. They're just ruled by instinct. They don't tend to put themselves out for strangers, unless they've been trained to assist and rescue.

I'm sure there are some exceptions, but in general - if you're an animal, there's not much percentage in altruism. Doesn't make you a bad animal! Even a bad person can be a good animal.

Watch out for those.

Sarah said...

Crap. I'm eating cookies in the shirt I wore to bed last night and a pair of yoga pants. I definitely didn't enter into an argument when my son insisted he be completely naked from the waist down, and I slept for an extra hour. Furthermore, I only cleaned the playroom, so the kids would hang out in there while I eat cookies and read blogs.
*sigh* This is who I am.

dogimo said...

All of that sounds pretty good to me!

Especially the extra hour of SLEEP. But no, damn, into work I must go.