Why should you do the right thing?

Life is full of choices. Everyday we are constantly bombarded from every angle with different options of what to do in literally hundreds of different circumstances. There's all these different things that we could do, what we might do, what we should or shouldn't do. It is often hard to make the right choice.

As adults we know the difference between right and wrong. And eventually, in most cases, we sift through the vast ream of  possibility and come up with the right choice. It isn't always easy though to make ourselves do the right thing. It shouldn't matter though, right is right, right? Not exactly. Motivation matters also. Don't believe me? Let's see what I can do about that.

There used to be a person living here that very strongly wanted to do what was right. And if that's all that mattered things would have been just peachy. Unfortunately, she had a habit of badgering other people into admitting that she did the right thing. She wanted others to pat her on the back or give her a cookie, figuratively speaking of course. She needed to be seen doing the right thing. For her it was all about recognition and the reward for doing good. More time and energy got spent on making sure other people recognized whatever good deed got done than went into doing the thing in the first place. And it quite often overshadowed and cheapened the whole thing. It felt like she was trying to buy karma.

Then there's other people that do the right thing and often don't say a word to anyone about it. But anyone paying any real attention can tell they don't care about right or wrong. They are just doing the right thing because, this time, it happens to benefit them. It either has the most positive impact on their lives or the least negative. These opportunists would be just as happy doing the wrong thing if there was more profit in it.

Some people do the right thing specifically to avoid some negative consequence. Don't cheat on your taxes or the IRS will get you. Don't speed or you will get a ticket. Don't cheat on your spouse because it will end in divorce. Oh, plus, adultery is a sin, and I hear there is a pretty heavy consequence sin as well. Anyone in this category had better keep their motivations to themselves, because nobody has any respect for people that only do the right thing to avoid punishment. We don't trust them.

So if all these things are not good reasons to do the right thing, what is then? Why should you do the right thing? What should your motivation be? We all have our own value judgement systems. But even so.You know what is right and what is wrong according to what you believe. And when you make the wrong choice you know it is wrong and whether you want to admit it or not, on some level you beat yourself up over it, and you lose some of your personal power.

But, when you make the right choice, you KNOW that you have done something good and pure.  It empowers you and frees you of some of the bad you may have done in the past. Attaching any motivation to this at all weakens the effect. Put no thought into the consequences, good or bad, or worry over the trials and tribulations.

Do the right thing simply because it is the right thing.