Meditating on the habits we create

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This morning I had time to meditate and read a little. I thought about a quote I had stumbled on, on Instagram.

"Make a habit of two things, to help or at least not to harm."

It seems very simple but the challenge will be to live by it, because people and their situation are very complex and difficult to manage like the way our brains are sometimes. You may attempt to help another person but how you assist them may be very different from how you believe helping looks. You may have good intentions but if your good intentions cause pain, then that is simply a part of living.

Doing no harm in the beginning may sound passive, simply standing there and not creating more issues. But doing no harm takes awareness and attention. It requires an awareness of how your words affect others, even if you believe that you have not taken sides during that moment. It demands that you stop yourself before your impatience transfers to another person. It demands that you step back when your ego suggests that you should push forward and establish yourself, especially when you feel that your behaviors are justified or the world is unfair. Doing no harm is not nothing, rather, it is an intentional choice every time that you make the choice to do no harm and if you are doing it correctly, it is not easy at all.

Sometimes helping and not helping can blur together. You come to realize that helping doesn't have to be overly generous, sometimes it involves just being there in silence, listening and letting someone know that they matter. Sometimes it is allowing someone to figure it out for himself or herself without getting in the way. I see it like learning to keep a rhythm, it can be ugly and not straight or simple some days, you could be stumbling around with your foot pounded too much on the ground. Or sometimes finding a rhythm that looks simple and appears to be effortless like helping another person without any idea that you were actually saying something that would help.

Maybe this is the point of creating a habit out of these two things. Creating a good habit within yourself creates a more positive lifestyle. Knowing that my intent was not to be perfect, nor to gain accolades for my actions but to live a life that will decrease the degree of harm I could mistakenly cause to those around me and increase the degree of benefit to those around me. That thought alone gives me reason to pursue my goal of being a good person.

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