Following Suggestions

Today was pretty easy; all I had to do was say nice things about people when they weren't necessarily within earshot. I accomplished that within the first few hours of being awake. 19 for 23. However, upon reviewing the list of suggestions this evening, I discovered that there was another way I could have been a peacemaker today.

One of the suggestions was to "Offer a compliment or a smile to someone who is having a rough day." Today, I interacted with such a person, and I don't think I complimented them, or even smiled to them, as I would have, had I remembered this suggestion.

At this point, I could easily blog about having room for improvement in that I could have been nicer to the person who was having a rough day, but I don't want to do that again. There have been many times when I've fallen short this month, and almost all of those times, I've blogged about how I should have done better. Tonight, instead, I want to blog about the morality of following these suggestions. In other words, I want to briefly explore whether or not the moral value of performing a good action varies depending on whether or not the action was suggested by another.

At first thought, I would say that it's better to do good without being prompted. Doing good because you're a good person is better than doing good because someone asked you to. But on the other hand, what difference does it make? Either way, you're doing good, and that's a good thing. However, doing good out of the goodness of your heart feels better than doing good at another's request. At least, it does for me. Could it be that the better feeling from doing good from my own volition is an indication from the Spirit that doing good "just because" is somehow better than doing good because someone else prompted me to?

I'm not sure, and one of the reasons I'm not sure is that I'm not sure it's even possible to do good without being asked or prompted to do it. Those of us who have been baptised have been given a gift by which the Spirit of God can be with us always. Through this gift, we can maintain a constant connection to the Holy Ghost, one of whose main jobs is to inspire others to do good. I suspect that He is frequently planting suggestions into our minds, giving us ideas of ways we can do good. I wouldn't be surprised if He was constantly giving us such suggestions as we've read and tried to follow during this Light the World challenge. If that's the case, it's virtually impossible to do good without someone asking you to do it, because the Holy Ghost is constantly suggesting ways in which we could do good.

So, really, the question of whether doing good on one's own is better than doing good at someone's request could be moot, because if we are doing good, we will never be on our own; we will always have a companion with us who frequently, if not constantly, suggests that we do good. I would say that the less prompting one requires to persuade them to do good, the better, but I'm not sure I can say if it's even possible to do good without receiving any prompting at all.

At the same time, though, doing good at another's request is better than not doing it at all. For example, while it would have been best if I had complimented or smiled at the person of my own accord, doing so because of the challenge would have been better than not doing it at all. So, naturally, I have some improvements to make, and one way I can make those improvements is by becoming better at following the Spirit's suggestions to do good.