In Pursuit to Find Some Goodness :Delights of the Ordinary: No 5
We must talk together.
“We must talk together. For though the world is not five hours old an evil has already entered it.”
—C.S. Lewis
And here we are now with our world being 4. 5 billion years. The oldest rocks are about 3.8 billion years old. The teeny-weeny minerals about 4.2 billion years.
Hence, I feel we should talk, you and me, about it. Because evil is in it. Because even our best-intentioned self is highly incapable of being good all the time. It will take many acts of steel courage to find goodness in the entirety of our world, we ought to find it.
Most of the time it will never be easy! Because evil is wrong, cruel, faulty, boorish and untrue. And it will take so much courage to search for it in ourselves!
Yet, most of the time it will be super easy to find evil- in others. And it will take nearly no courage to see it in people!
Goodness is excellency, kindness, truth and tenderness. Goodness is noble, just and patient. When the world is a billion-years-old-evil it is exhausting to perpetually show compassion all day long (also known as compassion fatigue). And because goodness is hard stuff to do, it is easier to transform into an ill-tempered, irritable child.
“When the world grows unsafe, when life charges at us with its stresses and its sorrows, our devotion to kindness can short-circuit with alarming ease. And yet, paradoxically, it is often in the… loss and uncertainty that we calibrate and supercharge our capacity for kindness. And it is always… a practice.”
Then do we practice goodness?
“If bats can hear shapes, plants can eat light, bees dance to show maps,” undoubtedly we can sing the sonnet of goodness. It is now almost fine that evil has entered and we can’t be good all the time yet we can seek goodness. Hope has not left. It will remain until you and I choose to cling to the goodness of the heart.
We practice goodness by observing the ordinary goodness around us. Like :
- a ladybug trying to trek on a grass leaf.
- a bumble bee routing into our ear thinking to make its home.
- sip the orange popsicle in the summer’s heat and check if your tongue has become orange.
- a whole day of hard work and hitting our heavenly beds to suddenly realize that everything in the world is mythical.
- seeing your children grow, then realising you are growing older.
And then if the above becomes effortless, start with -
Eating while smiling— Sitting at the table to eat may not be as silly as smiling while eating can be. While eating look at each other and smile. It will be dandy hilarious, melting the tension precisely in one spoonful. Upon finishing your meal, notice your empty plate that your hunger is satisfied. You may smile again!
The pressure is not to become good but to run after it in some of our small moments. And I know that the ordinary is shaping the goodness and it is the wonderment of the ordinary. They are all miracles and miracles can be found.
“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things.”
―Hans Christian Andersen
To end with this joy scroll:
Charlie Mackesy’s Instagram feed is a calming therapy for goodness and love. His book ‘The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse’ is a series of vignettes about mini-life lessons learnt by a small boy on his long journey home with his friends.
“I can’t see a way through”, said the boy.
“Can you see your next step?”
“Yes”
“Just take that”, said the horse. “This storm will pass.”
Thanks for reading and I hope you celebrate the goodness.
Bless you for your philosophical thoughts
Thank you Anugrah. Reading it felt like a breath of fresh air