Why would you be doing it?

Posted by Joe Henning
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How often would you be busy doing something and even as you’re doing it, ask yourself the question…. “Why am I doing it?” The most often, obvious reason would be that you get paid to do it, like having gone to your nine to five day job, or you may have to do it, like when you’re peeling potatoes, as the local fish and chips is closed for the night, but how often have you done something for the sheer fun of doing it, NOT getting paid, not even the possibility of it… perhaps just helping someone out or washing the dishes before your wife gets up to have to do do so?

The sheer value of doing something for nothing, the same as ‘giving’, is such a powerful concept and achieve so much in rewarding you, that if more of us were to do it, the power balance of good will come close to wiping out what is evil in our world. That is because giving is a godly thing, which makes it a difficult subject if you’re atheistic, as God is good, foremost and firstly. How could you even understand the concept of good if God is absent from your thinking? In fact, think about it, the word good, contains the three crucial letters making up the word God….

How could you expect to do good unto others when you don’t too often, if ever, even experience it? That is where the concept of reaching out beyond your experience takes over. Doing good, even and perhaps especially to those who may never do you a favour, is what elevates it to such a high plane.

There is however, the possibility that others are doing you good and you just don’t realize it. Life imitates itself and we learn firstly from those we live with, usually parents. A child’s personality and basic life foundation is formed by about age 5 and in that time period, chances are you’ve spent 99% or more of your existence in the care and presence of your parents and siblings. You invariably, in fact, without having a choice, take on their values, learn to speak like them, walk like them, eat like them and imitate their lives… Would the two year old child of wife beating dad like to be living a life differently from what it experienced up to then…? Firstly, the 2 year old won’t understand your question, couldn’t reply in such a way that it makes any sense and even if it could (let’s imagine it’s a child with an exceptional IQ…) what would be the chance that it would know what an alternative (perhaps meaning ‘better’) way of life is?

I have in age, already lived many decades and have reached a stage where I realize that life is for living by giving. Giving to those whom you love, understanding and time and even to those whom you may not have or may have consciously avoided to…. And the infinite, incalculable good of future rewards, as life will ‘pay you back’, will start to flow more abundantly back to you. Is it any wonder why the Dead Sea in Israel is essentially ‘dead’, when you realize that it only has an inflow, but nowhere to flow out to, in it’s own peculiar way, it thus never gives…

Would love to hear your thoughts...