a struggle called goodness

It has been one of those mornings, where you step into the shower, still half-asleep, without realizing there’s an “inzy winzy spider” hanging from the wall. Only that the rain pouring down came from the shower head in the form of a hot water monsoon. Spidey had no chance and was accidentally washed down the drain. Actually…No…I lie…It was me who killed the poor creature. Well, let’s say I just stood by idly, watching it drown. My decision was to not help the spider. And, even though it might be odd, I did feel slightly upset…because it didn’t take much for me to help the smallest of creatures.
 

The question pertaining to the goodness of man has been spinning around my head for the past weeks. It began with the night before Good Friday, when Pope Francis decided to alter the Roman Catholic tradition of washing the feet of 12 men from the Vatican – representing the Apostles. His predecessor, Benedict XVI, made a slight change by washing the feet of lay men instead of priests. Francis took this ritual back to its origins: the lost and forgotten, the outcasts of society. He visited the church of the Casal del Marmo youth prison to wash the feet of both young male and female prisoners.

For those who have read scriptures this shouldn’t come as a surprise. But for the world of media and sensationalist hype (and Catholic conservatives) this came as a massive shock. How can the Pope wash the feet of a Muslim woman? All kinds of controversial questions were raised thereafter. And this is something that really tugged at my heart…the way humanity has developed to disregard goodness and rather focus on the problem(s) surrounding an act. Or rather, the way people have been made to think that goodness is a surprising act.

This moral corruption I am talking about was backed up by a short paragraph of Paulo Coelho’s new book:

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In the monastery of Sceta, Abbot Lucas gathered the brothers together for a sermon.

‘May you all be forgotten,’ he said.

‘But why?’ one of the brothers asked. ‘Does that mean that our example can never serve to help someone in need?’

‘In the days when everyone was just, no one paid any attention to people who behaved in an exemplary manner,’ replied the abbot.

”Everyone did their best, never thinking that by behaving thus they were doing their duty by their brother. They loved their neighbour because they understood that this was part of life and they were merely obeying a law of nature. They shared their possessions in order not to accumulate more than they could carry, for journeys lasted a whole lifetime. They lived together in freedom, giving and receiving, making no demands on others and blaming no one.’

“That is why their deeds were never spoken of and that is why they left no stories. If only we could achieve the same thing now: to make goodness such an ordinary thing that there would be no need to praise those who practise it.”

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Good Friday is not called Good Friday because of the goodness of man. It was Jesus who decided to obey his father and sacrifice himself for humanity’s salvation. This narrative is unique and should serve us as example for what true goodness really entails. However, one might question the motives that accompany somebody’s act of goodness.

In a recent episode of the Colbert Report, Bill Clinton spoke about his many initiatives to help people around the world. Stephen Colbert asked him whether or not he was doing it for his own good. And Clinton replied: "I think the reason we should do things for other people at bottom is selfish, and there's no real difference between selfish and selfless if you understand how the world works. We're all tied together."

When dealing with the issue of helping somebody else we tend to focus on the bad ‘side-effects’. I suppose therein lies the struggle of goodness…to wrestle with the question: “What’s in it for me?” Because that is what we are conditioned to think first…at least in a secular world ruled by self-interest.

A few weeks ago, I found myself standing in the Waldsassen monastery library, which is famous for its wooden carvings, completed in in 1725 by the local sculptor Karl Stilp. He created 10 sculptures depicting the vices and temptations of the world in order to remind the monks who enter the library of the evil they faced each day. These are:

Defiance, stupidity, arrogance, vanity, boasting, ignorance, pride, deviousness, curiosity and hypocrisy.

 
Our struggle is not in identifying these traits in ourselves, but rather working against their slow and steady manifestation inside us. A reminder of their existence helps, but cannot remove it for good. We must constantly strive to keep the upper hand against evil, even when we do not know the outcome. Life is about that struggle on a daily basis.

It does not matter whether our selflessness is inspired by a selfish motive. What matters is that we DO stand up for goodness as if it was the most natural thing on earth – which, in truth, it is!

 

That is not to say that one has to save every little creature in an obsessive, Buddhistic manner. But humanity must make a conscious decision to be good, do good and stand for goodness. It is a simple decision, but a very, very difficult process to embark on.

Last month, Chinua Achebe, one of Africa’s greatest writers, passed away. He wrote on the domination of one group over the other and, in many ways, evil often seems to dominate the world today. There is this beautiful parable he tells that makes you realize that the victory lies within the struggle, which I leave with you for more thought.

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“The leopard meets the tortoise on a lonely stretch of road. The leopard has been trying to catch the tortoise for a long time. The tortoise is a trickster and so obviously has been escaping and then, on this day, the leopard finally catches up with him and says, ‘Aha! Now I’ve got you. Prepare to die.’

And the tortoise says to [the] leopard, ‘Can I ask you one last favor?’ And the leopard says, ‘Yes, why not?’ And the tortoise says, ‘Give me a short time to prepare myself for death.’ And the leopard looked around and said, ‘I don’t see why not. Yes, go ahead.’

But then, instead of standing still and thinking as the leopard had expected, the tortoise began to dig and scatter sand all over the road, throwing sand in all directions with his hands and feet.

And the leopard says, ‘What’s going on, why are you doing that?’

And the tortoise says, ‘I’m doing this because after I am dead I want anyone passing by this spot and seeing all this sign of struggle on the road to say, ‘A man and his match struggled here.’”

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