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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Presence of Good; Absence of Bad

When we want to see if something is good, do we count the good things about it or the bad things about it? Does something need the number of bad things to be zero in order to be called good?

Is a good person allowed to have no vices?
Is a time which I wish to call good allowed to have no bad memories associated with it?
Can a good job never have anything uninteresting in it?
Can a life not to be called good if it ever saw any rough patches?
Is sincerity and concentration characterised by absence of moments of distraction?

The common answer to all the above questions is easily guessed.

I know I am writing on something very obvious and spoken of million times. Yet, I find myself motivated to write about it. Because, I see that we do it again and again. We hate someone because he has done something bad, and forget all the good he has done. We often remember the bad moments of a time and forget the happinesses it had granted us. We call our jobs bad because we have to do many uninteresting things in it; and we forget that all the little interesting things that we get to do happen only because our job allows us the freedom to indulge in them -- officially sometimes, and sometimes unofficially. We think that life sucks because it's difficult; we forget its riches most of the times.

Yes, I am talking about the cliche called positive thinking -- the thinking about the good things about something. What I want to add are two things: One, you need not forget about the bad things in something to appreciate its goodness. Two, you should practice it when it's most tempting to do otherwise. Then only it would work. Otherwise, why should it? We all are very positive about everything when we are having fun in water-park. Can we, when we are fighting cancer?

1 comment:

Reswin said...

really nice one