ON GOODNESS AND THE INTENT BEHIND GOODNESS

I read this morning on a post in LinkedIn something which said, “Never stop being a good person because of bad people.” This statement made me ponder and hence this post.

I completely agree with the sentiment expressed above that we should never stop being good because of bad people but this led me to think about what goodness really is and how good intent is more important that goodness. To elucidate further, in today’s world, I find that even bad people appear to wear a mask of goodness. The best example of such fake goodness would be our crooked politicians and Fake God Men.

I therefore believe that the intent behind being good is what really matters. There are many who act good without really being good. Something like the goodness of PR.

I believe true goodness is being good without expecting anything in return. Without expectations of reward from Man or God.

Unfortunately, appearing to be good is an art that all bad people soon master to pursue their devious intent. I feel sorry that communication tools are now being misused to create false impressions of goodness and they call this PR though good PR is truly different from fake PR.

Going further, I have found many bad people whom I have come across in my life to have good intent.

We all grapple with many issues in being good for surely goodness is always exploited and misused or abused by this world. There is also the question of “should we be good to bad people who are trying to harm us?” I have grappled with this issue many times in my life and initially used to react negatively to bad people by paying them back in their own coin but I have now realised the mistake of my ways.

So to now answer this question in my old age, I would say, Yes, let’s be good to the bad people as well. But if you find your goodness is being exploited by the same bad people or is considered a weakness of yours to do as they please; then my suggestion is to just walk away.

This leads us to the most challenging question. What then is true goodness? I guess good actions performed due to good intentions and without any selfish motives will be what constitute true goodness while bad actions performed even with the best of intentions cannot be considered goodness.

Image Source / Courtesy: https://lifepalette.com/daily-reading-goodness-2/