To all the "much more than good" ppl I adore.. Cheers!!

I hear a shrill “Be good!!!” every morning around 8, when my neighbour sends her daughter off to school.. Ok nothing spectacularly special about this, all parents want and expect that from their lil darlings. Good thing too, if that does indeed percolate to the core of all these cute precocious minds and they turn out good.

Good enough for starters I say… are we done here? Ok so what happens if we’re good and just that. We sympathize with the people “born into” picking through and clearing out garbage. We are nice to our domestic help. We help with work at home. We feel bad about sickly men waving mangled arms helplessly at us through the car window, and hold out some money for them. We play fair at work, a sparkling clean conscience thanks to our sitting happy with only what we think we deserve. We do not refuse an ailing man a ride to the nearest hospital. We do not wrong anybody deliberately.

And what when we’re good AND that something more.. say ‘X’. We don’t stop at sympathizing with the victims of ridiculous notions like a different caste; in fact help them help themselves. We are nice to our domestic help, and understand how they make ends meet, and provided we find takers for all this - we take time out to help them and their kids read and write, discuss matters like we would with a colleague, in turn broadening their thinking, thus changing perspectives and mindsets of them and a host of people they connect with, and be there for them in their direst times (ok I have seen this really work!). We do not stop at doling out alms, we do something to help them sustain. Now that ‘something’ will sound clichéd, preachy and will definitely invoke the “darn, shes at it again” feeling.. but if not this then what?

We do not only be fair at work, we voice out concerns against discrimination, whoever be it at the receiving end. We try and get involved with work we like, as against getting into a rut of doing work that we chance upon or is handed down.
And yea, its not only about not refusing someone a ride when asked, but about being the one to step ahead and help someone helpless and hurt, when most others ‘be good’; ‘feel bad’ for who’s lying out there, in ‘being good’.

Its one thing to feel good about doing good, with convenience, comfort, effort and time spent, all skewed in our favour. Its another, to really mean to see our ‘being good’ translate into a substantial enough impact. Not ok to fool oneself into feeling good about doing just enough to stay away from pangs of guilt. That’s analogous to scrubbing clean our corner in a room full of shit, and being ok with the stench that’s floating around you. Now dealing with that takes initiative and action-orientedness, the kind that’s obviously not inherent, but rubs off onto you from the others around.. this kind of non-passive “goodness” if inculcated in all.. would work wonders!! Don’t you think!