A Neat Little Proverb

Earlier today, a friend of mine shared what he called "a neat little proverb" with me.

Be Brave Enough to stand against danger alone,

Be Wise Enough to know when you cannot,

And be Strong Enough to ask for help.

We don't often have to "stand against danger alone," but there are other things we must do, and there are times when we have to do them alone. It takes a certain amount of courage and a certain kind of strength to face life's dangers and challenges alone, and we should all strive to develop that strength and courage in ourselves.

And when the challenge is beyond us, or when we would otherwise benefit from a helping hand, it's good to be wise enough to know when we need or could use some help. Even when we are brave enough to face challenges alone, it's smart to know when we can't and/or don't have to.

Yet, asking for help can sometimes be a challenge in its own right. It takes wisdom to know whom and when to ask, and it takes courage and strength to be willing to ask. Often, we let our pride or our desire to not be a burden to others prevent us from seeking the help that we need and that is readily available. But there is strength in numbers, and one kind of strength is the will to do what it takes to get more strength, even ask for help.

There are times when we need the strength and courage to stand alone, and there are times when we need the strength and courage to ask for help. May we always have the strength and courage to do what we must, and may we have the wisdom to know which kinds of strength and courage to exercise.

Choose To Be Kind

I think that the last part of Red's message from yesterday bears repeating for emphasis: "We can always choose to be kind, and that will always matter."

She said this in the context of someone who is doomed to suffer some terrible fate and can nonetheless choose to help others, even though they can't save themselves. Yet, what she said is true of people in every situation. We can always choose to be kind, no matter what our situation is.

I came very close to forgetting that lesson this evening. It was late, and I had already done so many things to help my family, and I felt like them asking me to do yet another favor for them tonight would push me over the edge. But they kept asking for help, and I almost stopped choosing to be kind. Thankfully, their requests ran out before my patience did, but it's humbling to know that, even in moments of growing impatience, I can still choose to be kind.

Normally, the choice to be kind is easy, but even when it's difficult, it's still possible. I need to be better at remembering that and at always choosing kindness, regardless of my circumstances.

The Doings of the Doomed

One of the uplifting messages I heard today came from a Trope Talk YouTube video about doomed heroes. In the outro, the speaker, Red, shared her thoughts about how a story about a doomed protagonist can still be more inspiring than depressing:

There is an odd, heartbreaking, satisfying grief in bearing witness to the heroics of a protagonist who's been dead from the beginning, who cannot possibly save themselves and is no longer trying, who is instead using every second they have left in the narrative to make the story a better place for everyone who will outlive them, because while we spend most of our lives caring for ourselves and driving our own narratives, at the end of the day, no matter what the night holds and what secret tragedies may be lurking for us, we can always choose to be kind, and that will always matter.

I find this relatable because, whether we know it or not, we're all doomed to die eventually, and when the inevitable happens, one of the few things that'll matter is whether and how much we made life better for everyone else. And if that's one of the few things that'll matter at the end of our lives, shouldn't that also be one of the only things that matter during it? When faced with mortality, people tend to pay a lot of attention to the choices they make and how they spend what little time they have left. But whether we face it or not, we're all mortal. All our days are numbered, whether the number is great or small, known or unknown. But the number of days we have left shouldn't matter to us, when one of the few things that really matter is how we spend them.

Personally, I'm going to try to use every day I have left, be they few, hundreds, or tens of thousands, to try to make life better for other people. I won't always succeed. I won't always succeed in trying. But if I have to die eventually, I hope I'll leave this place a little better than I found it.

The Virtue of Courtesy

Whenever my brother and I walk our mom's dog, we always bring poop bags with us, often more than we think we'll need. We always clean up after our dog, and we sometimes clean up after other people's dogs, too. It's just polite, like picking up litter and tidying up messes. We try to make the neighborhood we share with others a better place for our having been here, rather than a worse one.

We should all try to practice this kind of courtesy. We should all try to make life better for the people around us, or at least try not to make life worse. We should try to accommodate and care for others. We should try to lift them up rather than tear them down. We should clean up our own messes as best we can, and we should quietly help others with their messes as well. I think the world would be a much better place if we all had this commitment to the virtue of courtesy.

Too often, I find evidence of people making life worse for others. I smell cigarette or weed smoke. I see broken alcohol bottles and other trash. I see how people are hurting themselves and creating discomfort and danger for the people around them. But I, whose thankfully better-hidden pot is no less black than their brutally visible kettle, try not to judge. I have to work at trying not to make my problems other people's problems, as we all should. While it's wise to seek and accept help when needed and/or offered, it's courteous to try not to create problems for others.

As with most of my blog posts, this message isn't actually directed at any of you. These are lessons that I am learning and that I still need to learn. If you learn something too, that's great. I hope we can make the world better together. But these messages are mostly directed to me. I'm glad that I try to clean up my own and other people's messes. I should keep that up, and I should try not to make any more messes than I can't avoid making. I try to make other people's lives better, and that's good, but I should also keep trying very hard not to make anyone's life worse.

We all have to live with each other, some more closely than others. We should all do our parts to make and keep this world a comfortable place for everyone to live in together.

In the Right Place at the Right Time

Yesterday, I got lucky, or rather, I was blessed, to be the right person at the right place at the right time so that I could be a blessing to others.

I slept in a little bit yesterday morning. I knew I'd have some time between my morning exercise and my first tutoring appointment, so I cut into that time by half an hour so I could rest for another half hour before catching the bus to school.

On my way to school, I saw someone I recognized: the man with the lunchbox, whom I often run into while waiting for the bus. That morning, he was going for a walk with his wife and kid. His wife, having walked a bit ahead, paused to let them catch up. But the place at which she stopped was in front of someone's driveway, and that someone was ready to leave.

Something I haven't mentioned about the man and his wife before, because it wasn't relevant before, is that the two of them seem deaf, and I am now confident that at least the wife is. I've never seen either of them communicate audibly, just with signs. And when the person whose driveway the wife was blocking asked her to move and even honked at her, she couldn't hear him and didn't notice him.

But I, having happened to notice their deafness in our previous interactions, and having tweaked my schedule slightly to have happened to be there at that moment, knew what was going on, and I was able to step in to help. I informed the driveway owner that the woman was deaf, nonverbally got the woman's attention, and directed her attention to the man in the car in the driveway behind her. She cleared the way, the man drove away, and I felt lucky to have been the right person in the right place at the right time.

It felt then, and it feels now, that God had been working through me to make that little miracle happen. This is odd because I hadn't felt like I was being directed. I had chosen to change my schedule that morning because I was tired and lazy, not because I got the impression that it was, for some reason, important to leave later than normal that day.

A similar "coincidence" had happened years ago when I had taken a stray pitbull to the pound and was able to adopt her a week later with timing that seemed too lucky to have been mere luck. I hadn't felt impressed to leave the dog at the pound; I was just doing what I had thought was the best thing to do, and by some miracle, I turned out to have been right. God had turned my mistake into a miracle, and yesterday morning, He turned my laziness into a miracle, too.

God is very good at working miracles through imperfect people. We make mistakes and bad decisions every day. And yet, more often than is probable, those mistakes can work out to somehow have been the best thing we possibly could have done. I'm grateful that God is pulling strings to make miracles out of the decisions we make, and that, regardless of where we go, what we do, or when we leave, we frequently (miraculously) tend to end up in the right place at the right time.

X Is As X Does

This morning, following a conversation I had previously had about cowardice, I sort of stumbled into the maxim, "X is as X does." Traits and behaviors are good or bad to the extent that they cause or reduce happiness or suffering. For example, cowardice is sometimes evil in that it prevents people from taking actions that would prevent or alleviate harm. Yet, cowardice is not always evil. There are times when no bravery is required, so the cowardice does no harm. Cowardice is as cowardice does. In the cases where the cowardice does nothing wrong, there is nothing wrong with the cowardice.

This maxim may also apply to other things, even to good things. Normally, my blog is a good thing, because it encourages the generation and sharing of spiritually-uplifting and informative thoughts. But last night, my blog wasn't as helpful. The thoughts I generated last night weren't really worth sharing, and they certainly weren't worth stay up that late for. In fact, insofar as my blog kept me up later than was healthy for me, it could be said that my blog was, at least in that moment, harmful. Of course, the same could be said for many of the activities I engage with. Sometimes, they are good in that they cause happiness and help to reduce the harm caused by stress, and other times, they cause harm by keeping me up late. The activities themselves are neither good nor bad, but their effects can be either.

Some people say that "evil is as evil does," and I think it's true. Evil actions and traits are considered "evil" because of the evil (or the suffering) that those traits and actions cause. Similarly, good actions and traits are good because of the good that they do. It's all well and good to say that you have charity, empathy, and compassion, but unless you actually practice those traits, they aren't actually doing any good.

I only stumbled into this maxim this morning, but I currently think that it's a good rule of thumb to judge by. We can tell whether is something is good or evil by the good or evil they do. And since traits can have multiple effects, some good, some bad, those traits can be a mix of good and bad, along with everything else. We can judge everything by its actions, effects, and results, and we can tell whether something is good or bad based on the good or the bad that it does.

Out of Energy. Out of Time.

There are many events from today that I could blog about, but a lot of them are morally nuanced enough that it would take a good deal of time and energy to unpack them. I was dangerously low of energy hours ago, and now I am also desperately low on time. You're not going to get a quality blog post from me tonight. I'd apologize for that, but I'm even more sorry that I didn't give up sooner so I could go to bed at a reasonable time. At least I can go to bed now.