LIFE Nugget 11:
Written on: May 30, 2024
We often view good and bad as opposite poles on a moral spectrum. This binary perspective is understandable—we experience their effects as distinctly different, both in material form and in our emotional responses. Material damage or loss is clearly “bad” when it prevents proper use of resources or creates deficits in meeting our needs. Similarly, we label feelings as “bad” when they obstruct our progress toward fulfilling desires.
Yet a fascinating truth emerges when we look deeper: these obstructions are largely mental constructs. Our interpretations can be reframed through perspective shifts, potentially transforming negative feelings into positive ones despite unchanged external conditions. This phenomenon is demonstrated repeatedly by remarkable achievers who produce outstanding results despite material or physical limitations, powered by formidable willpower and positive attitudes.
Beyond Binary Thinking
Given that feelings can be modified through perspective shifts and willpower development, good and bad are not truly separate, opposing states. Rather, they resemble points along a single dynamic wave varying in intensity. This insight applies to most concepts we typically divide into dual states—our reality more closely resembles multi-layered, multi-shaded, non-dual, multi-variable waves.
Valuable perspective changes become incorporated into new attitudes, requiring modifications at the cognitive level. This process parallels effective learning, which demands shifts in thinking approach—initially through repeated practice and later through real-world application. Cognitive shifts in perspective follow a similar pattern: first through habit formation, then through application in lived experience.
While these changes effectively shift our emotional response from negative to positive regarding the same situation, this represents only the beginning. The “needle” must be maintained at the same or higher level to function effectively in ongoing life situations.
The Wavelength of Positivity
Viewing positivity as a wave with varying intensity proves more practical and powerful than relying on simple binary states of good and bad. Our overreliance on verbal language may contribute to our bias toward such binary outlooks, where a person is either good or bad, work is either complete or incomplete.
Poetry and songs capture emotional nuances that prose cannot generate. Visual arts extend this depth and range even further. So what sustains high positivity levels? What maintains a positive attitude once established?
The Cosmic Principle of Maintenance
Drawing from Vedic doctrine, we recognize the trinity of divinities representing the primary cosmic functions: creation, maintenance, and destruction. These principles apply at the microcosmic level in Ayurveda for biochemical reactions in the human body and offer insights into maintaining positivity.
Energy, practices, and time are required to address damages, insufficiencies, and “badness”—activities that fall under the principles of destruction and creation as we eliminate the undesirable and replace it with something new. This includes investing in developing new habits, practices, and behaviors to move from “bad” to “good” on our continuum.
The Critical Investment of Maintenance
A natural question arises: if we’ve become “good,” why invest further? Isn’t maintenance effortless? The dedication of a supreme deity to the maintenance cosmic function partly answers this question—maintenance requires significant investment.
Maintenance demands the same three resources: energy, practices, and time. This investment is crucial because any static state makes us brittle as layers of egoism take root. Some resources must be allocated to cleansing through healthy daily routines, while the remainder is directed toward sharing our goodness with others.
Counterintuitively, in our design as social beings capable of intelligence and communication, all virtues and values are maintained through the process of giving them to others. This often conflicts with individualistic approaches to personal growth, but we must distinguish between two essential processes:
- Moving the needle toward goodness (growth)
- Maintaining that goodness (give-back)
The Necessity of Giving
We can give to others in numerous forms: teaching, social service, expressing love, providing care, offering appreciation. Those who fail to demonstrate goodness by benefiting others inevitably lose ground through lack of maintenance investment and gradually recede into “badness.”
This give-back process parallels the evolution of thought from individual to social to universal. Spirituality and faith provide powerful levers by establishing institutional practices, events, and rituals that formalize this process of giving. Participation in spiritual organizations can provide structured channels for people who struggle to organize giving practices independently.
The Price of Virtue
To summarize, being good and maintaining that state comes with a substantial price—investment in others. This requirement is simultaneously challenging and increasingly accessible given our expansive digital landscape.
The hidden truth about goodness is that it isn’t a destination but a continual practice. Like a garden requiring constant tending, our virtue withers without regular care. The price of goodness isn’t paid once but daily—not through suffering but through the deliberate sharing of our best selves with the world around us.
Author: L.N. Venkataraman
To reach out, email to: venkat@adaptive-instruction.in
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