Striving for “Goodness”
Goodness
Let us make goodness more stalwart, my friends. Good, too, is the knife that excises the rotten flesh and the worm; and good is the fire burning in the forest, that the good plow might cleave the earth.
Let us make goodness more resolute, my friends. Every weakling with weepy eyes and delicate words, every cretin with obscure motives and condescending gestures, wears goodness, awarded by you, like a locked door closed to our examination. We need to call men good who are men of honorable heart, men who are not two-faced, who are humble.
See that the word “good” makes itself patty to the vilest complicities, and confess that when you have said “good,” it was always-or almost always-a lie. The time has come to stop lying, for, after all, we are responsible only to ourselves, and in private we are consumed with remorse for our falseness, and, as a result, live locked inside ourselves, within the four walls of our astute stupidity.
Good men will be those who most swiftly free themselves from this terrible lie and learn to speak out with obstinate goodness against whatever deserves it. Goodness that marches, not with someone, but against someone. Good that does not toady or flatter, but gives its all in the battle, since good is the principal weapon of life.
And so, only those who are of honorable heart will be called good, those who are not two-faced, the unbowed, the best. They will vindicate goodness, which is rotting from such baseness; they will be the defenders of life and the rich in spirit. And theirs, only theirs, is the kingdom of earth. — Written By: Pablo Neruda
Is “goodness” something that you are born with, or something that you acquire on your daily travels through life? Is goodness something that you learn or is it something that is innate, lurking in the depths of your conscience waiting for its chance to emerge? Neruda seems to think that “goodness” is not a label we assign to ourselves, but a state of being, a moment of action. It is our actions that make us good. We can lie to ourselves, but in that moment of absolute vulnerability, when we are alone beyond the judging gaze of the world, we find the truth. The truth is that a deliberate effort must be made to be good, and it is only when you realizes this, when your goodness is stacked against its antithesis (selfishness, greed, jealousy), that we can move beyond the “four walls of your astute stupidity.”
We have to feel and experience that which is not good to truly understand what it means to be good, because after all that’s truly the “principle weapon of life.”
