Is goodness good beyond a certain point?

If your answer is yes, it is not right!

If your answer is no and you mean to turn to bad after that point, it is completely wrong!!

If your answer is yes and you chose to be neutral – neither good nor bad – beyond that point, then only it is right!!!

Here is why?

During my tenure with a German multinational organization, my colleagues in another group got a new boss. Within few days, these colleagues discovered that he was difficult to deal with. These colleagues decided to stick to their decency, with a hope that boss would change. But that did not happen, even after several months. Over next few further months, some colleagues decided to act difficult with the boss; few would not co-operate or ignore his direction by making one excuse or another. This made the boss very toxic and vindictive against them. There were others, who continued with their good attitude towards the boss. Instead of appreciating, boss started to take his frustration for those, who were acting difficult, on them, overload them with work, yet term them under-performers and timid. Net result was that all employees were unhappy and boss was unrelenting but with increasing frustration.

In a relationship, if you keep tolerating truant behavior of your partner or spouse, you may run risk of lending support to his/her toxic leanings. If your good attitude does not bring a change and you turn it towards bad, it would spell a disaster.

If you keep fulfilling demands of a kid out of love, reasonable or not, you would encourage that kid to become demanding and in turn dictatorial in latter part of life; but if you don’t, without making her/him understand, you would drive kid to become obstinate.

Belief “When goodness does not work, switch to be bad” is a big bane!

This belief is thoroughly blended in the blood of majority. If kindness does not yield result, resort to cruelty; if friendship does not work, find an answer through ferocity; build or break! Most of us seem to swing between two extremes. We don’t let go; don’t call it quits or ignore. And this is what turns a beauty into burden, blessing into bane and great into grim. We would justify our wrong action under cover of having tried right one. That is bunk!

This goes on micro to macro levels. Look at how handling of terrorism has been goofed and lives of millions made ever unsafe!

When things don’t work out for us, most of us have learnt to derive emotional satisfaction through blame games, biases, bashing, banishing, booing, anger, antagonism or abandonment! Often, one sees immediate results; but that is an illusion; it is actually the making of worse things to come!! World over, everyone thinks that wrong means can win him/her right; but every time everyone has been proved wrong. That is what human history shows. Moreover, if you rendezvous with or resort to bad means, you run risk of losing your goodness for good.

So, if good does not give results, going for bad is never a good option!

Endless goodness is not good either!

If you do it right or good, you would get good results. You would then be tempted to do more of it. At one point, it would give rise to greed, addiction to good and then things start to go down. Take any example – loyalty of an employee beyond a certain level becomes a liability and employer would subtly start to dislike it. Dedication above a certain decibel is disastrous.

Endless goodness would end you up exploited in hands of evil or bad ones! Worst still is that any strong attribute such as endless goodness is like an electric charge, which would attract the opposite and set you on a course of collision.

So, never forget that good is really good until it hits a limit!

Being neutral is next to good!

Learning and practicing to be neutral is one of the nicest things to do. When things don’t work out despite your best try, it is pointless to keep trying same way. Leave it and come to a neutral point. Just take no position, neither left nor right. Be at the center and watch for things to settle on their own.

To come to center or neutral state, you can do one or most of following:

• No reaction or emotion, just observation of what is going on
• Be silent and serene; but not stern
• Ignore, if need arises
• Neither bend nor back-out
• Never give-in; but you should let go
• Stick to facts and stay unruffled
• Maintain calm and candor
• Do communicate but concisely and precisely
• Remain firm and fair

When you are neutral or at center, you would make unique experience of:

1. Sowing in you seeds of decisiveness
2. Learning divinity in detachment
3. Understanding what it means to hold your feet firmly on ground
4. Raising your self-esteem
5. Finding real purpose in your pursuits

To sum up, if goodness is gold, your ability to go to center would add to its glitter!