Well, I have this friend, and I have known him for a while. Sometimes he make sense to me and sometimes he doesn't. I used to connect with him a lot better, but those days are long behind us. Anyway, a lot of what he says sticks with me; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Trust me when I say there has been plenty of ugly, plenty of bad, and plenty of good. An equal balance of everything. One day we were talking and he said something that caught my attention in an unpleasant way. It is the idea that people are kind to others to fulfill selfish motives. In other words, anyone who is nice is fake. This sounds really absurd until you think about it. His argument was that it goes against our nature to be kind to other people because we are inherently bad, and we only really care about ourselves. I immediately started examining myself, paranoid that it might be true, that I might hold some characteristic of an inconsiderate wretch using and manipulating people to get what I want out of them. Is that really true?
The world is a hideous place, and our hearts are hideous too. I was watching War of the Worlds the other day, some time in the late afternoon. Tom Cruise and his kids were in possession of a working car, and they came upon an extremely desperate crowd of people who attacked them and forced the car from them. They were breaking the windows, pointing guns, and generally acting like they had flipped their lids. His daughter, who looked to be around 8 years old, was subject to the terror. I sat in amazement. Are people really going to act like that when the world ends? To the point where they could care less if they harm a child? Lord, take me home before that happens. I don't want to see the ugly side of humanity manifest in such a way.
We don't always see it, but there exists an evil inside of us, things we don't know that we are capable of, sins that will devour our hearts if we let them. It's scary to think we would put ourselves above children, above anyone, just to survive another day. I believe that we are evil to the core of our souls, and in my darkest hour I've thought things and said things and done things that wouldn't have been thought, said, or done if I had been thinking about anyone other than myself. Everyone has, and there exists not one righteous person on the face of this earth. So why bother even trying?
My friend is a good guy at heart, but I have often suspected that he just doesn't care how he treats people. He doesn't want to be fake, so kudos to him for being real, whatever that means. Whenever I start asking the why questions in life, I look to God, but I know His purpose is more complicated and intricate than what I could ever even hope to understand. So, I carry this quote by Gandhi around with me just to get me through the tough days and to give me a little encouragement~
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it."
It is very important that I continue on with this little role I play in my every day life, because God uses every detail, and pulls every string. My heart is not perfect at all, it has been broken and dropped and repaired and re-broken.. I'm a mess and a masterpiece, and contradictions have never made more sense to me than they do now. I don't show the world the extremes of who I am, nor will I ever be brave enough to, but what I can say is that because of the evil in my heart I am capable of terrible things, and because of the Holy Ghost I have more good in me than even I know. When you show the world your extremes, it reacts, and not always in a good way. I think that's why we keep ourselves hidden, we'd rather have part of ourselves locked away in the dark, our deepest thoughts and emotions concealed from the world so we don't have to deal with it. Because dealing with it is harder.
Do I think people are just nice to fulfill their own selfish desires? Maybe some people. And maybe it happens most of the time. Maybe its how we are raised or what we think God expects of us or some other motivation entirely, I don't really know. What I do know though is that I like to see a smile on someones face and know that I put it there. I like to go out of my way to do something for someone else when I'm in a great mood. And I would like to sit in the floor of a high school bathroom with a friend who is crying her eyes out because she was used and abused by someone, to lend my shoulder and sit in silence. Maybe there really is some selfish motivation in being good to other people. But whenever I see someone struggling, crying, or going through a hard time, I want to reach out. And the only reason or motivation I can think of is that I didn't have a shoulder to cry on when I went through this rough spot, and I wish someone had been there for me, and I'll bet she wishes someone would be there for her. I do it because no one did it for me. And when someone does see me through a hard time or stick with me, I still reach out, because someone was there for me and someone should be there for that person too.
I don't really know the deep psychological methods behind my madness. I do what I do, I am who I am, and I love what I love. Life is quite a bit more enjoyable when you live more than you question. Apparently Gandhi thinks so too.
