Two Daily Practices to Become a Good Person
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Because it may take some practice
Authors note: the following pertains only to those people who don’t hate people, people who are tired of being called a racist, and people who aren’t sure if they are racist.
Step one: Wake up in the morning and give thanks.
No, not that you aren’t another race. Give thanks for what you have received in this life, and think beyond temporal material things. Be thankful for life, for existence, for all that pertains to being human. You’ve been given an opportunity above all things. Humanity has the opportunity to think, conquer or build up, to profit, to gain, to improve. Mankind is the steward of this world. We have been gifted with life.
Thankfulness is not a spiritual exercise in positive feelings for emotional well-being. Thankfulness is a self-correcting reflection that weeds out areas of potential discontent, jealousy, greed, envy and strife. Where I am unthankful, I am unsatisfied. Dissatisfaction requires a villain. Is it a person or people or condition that causes me to be unsatisfied? It will inevitably be the object of my frustration.
Along side the weeding out, thankfulness also plants. It plants us firmly in the reality of our existence. We are neither worm nor god. We are dust of the ground. We have been crowned with the highest of honor among living things as rational beings. We are also prone to cross the line of honor that is meant to prevent us from pride and run headstrong into self-sufficiency. It’s faulty to believe that I am not only my source but also my end. To become an island is to collapse in on ourselves leaving no room for the outsider.
With thankfulness we force ourselves into a posture of humility. A man who is thankful is a man who is a receiver and not a giver only. Thankfulness admits not what I have done which puffs up, but what I have that came from outside of me. What I have makes me who I am, and what I have I have been given; therefore, what I am I have been given.
Step two: Spend the rest of the day giving to everyone all the things you have now admitted to receiving.
If you were thankful for opportunity, give it. If you were thankful for justice, give it. If you are thankful for fairness, give fairness. If you are thankful for anything, give it. If it’s forgiveness, give some of that too.
Give even more. Give preference. Prefer the other as much as you love getting your preference. Give in. Let go of silly arrogance you hold on to. Let go of causes and reasons another person, in your perception, doesn’t deserve whatever you are withholding from them. Give up. Give up being more than the dust we are. Give up fear.
We have received freely and ought to give freely.
No exceptions.
Final note: We could pen endless more practical applications to assure racism ends, but only when the heart has been changed does the river that flows out of it become pure. Nothing in the article referenced race. Hopefully we realize that there is no separation or levels of loving your neighbor. You either love them all or or you have failed to understand what love is.
