Do No Harm

“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope … and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples … build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” —Robert F. Kennedy

 Wow, “a tiny ripple of hope” … that when combined with other ripples can “build a current,” one that can knock down oppression and resistance.

Those are powerful words and while I’ve been thinking about this blog for a while it’s taken me a very long time to get started writing it.

You see, what I want to write about isn’t about hope, it’s about what happens when evil and destructiveness are involved in the midst of something that’s supposed to be good and healing.

You may know what I’m trying to say. I’ll give a few examples.

Have you ever been involved with a group of people that was trying to do something good for a cause? And all the while the group is trying to do it there is one person, or a handful of people, who just continue to bring negative energy into the situation. There’s bickering amongst the group and soon few people show up to help.

I think about jobs I’ve had where one supervisor continuously said bad things about his supervisor to his staff. I felt the tension and negative energy in that situation and I often wondered if it bled over on the project we were doing. 

It’s the same thing in some churches. Those who claim to be doing God’s work are often not really doing that at all. Because if they were really doing what God commanded there would be love in their hearts instead of constant gossiping, lying, judgment and just overall bad feelings. How can a person say they are serving God and praying for good things to happen, when they spend more time putting down others and lying?

It happens at jobs, clubs, churches, and in families.

Do no harm

We’ve all heard that over and over and I discovered that it’s used in some religions as well as in the oath doctors used to take:

• The Golden Rule in Buddhism is: Do no harm.

• When John Wesley gave the General Rules to the people called Methodists the first thing he told them was to do no harm, and

• The original Hippocratic Oath, once sworn by all doctors required that its adherents “do no harm” to their patients.

It’s used in many more places than I listed, but the point is made, it is used in different religions and by the medical community.

How do we do harm? We don’t do harm by focusing on love which encompasses all things good, but we do harm when we focus on all that is wrong. We talk about it to whoever will listen and we keep the evil energy alive.

We do harm when we don’t show love. If I look someone in the face and smile really big at them when I want a favor, yet I won’t give them a passing glance when I don’t need something, that’s not love and I find it unlikely that many folks would think it was.

It’s easier to catch flies with honey than with vinegar, and so it is with people, with success, with doing right.

We do what we know is right to do, even when it would be easier to do wrong.

What I’m saying is that if a small act of kindness — a ripple of hope — can spread out and have a snowball effect for good, then too, can a negative act have the same impact.

To me, if there’s negativity behind the scenes, then the energy from that is going to show in real life.

If sending up prayers can heal, then can’t also speaking evil harm? Does it harm even if the person spoken about never knows it was said?

It takes just as much energy to say a bad thing about someone as it does to say a good thing, maybe more.

Another thing to remember: the majority is not always right.

Just because you may have found a group of people to befriend who support your negativity, that doesn’t make it right.

Most people would probably say that it matters not what they say or do in private, that it doesn’t reflect upon their public work. I disagree. I think that our negative energy shows up in our lives and causes us not to succeed where we are most striving for success.

I implore you to always strive to do the right thing no matter what. Yes, we all fall short — I never claim to do the right thing all the time. But I do know that the attitude of frustration that says if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, has never worked for me even though I’ve followed that path before.

Do no harm in person or behind another person’s back.

No Excuses

“There’s right and there’s wrong. You got to do one or the other. You do the one, and you’re living. You do the other, and you may be walking around but you’re dead as a beaver hat.”
—Marion “John” Wayne

We have many opportunities in life to do the right thing or to do what we know is wrong. When we choose to do something that we know we should not do there are usually ways we can justify our actions.

Excuses and blame are easy to think of such as: I didn’t mean to; it just happened; it was her fault; I was just living in the moment; it was the alcohol; I didn’t plan it this way; and so on. And while there are times that we do things that we know we shouldn’t there is always the opportunity to stop moving forward with our mistake.

Just because we don’t see consequences of bad behavior today, it doesn’t mean there won’t be any or that when there are consequences we will know about them. Any time we are involved in behavior that could harm another person we need to step back and stop what we are doing.

Life offers us many temptations. We may feel justified in doing wrong because we are lonely, depressed, poor, or otherwise downtrodden. But doing wrong has no real excuses, at least not the kinds that absolve us of guilt.

Walking down the path of wrong will never bring us long-term fulfillment or happiness. It probably will cause us harm and hurt others too. It is our decision to do right or wrong, but excuses to justify do little if anything to right a wrong.

You can decide at any moment to stop a wrongdoing in process.

Enabling Others

“A person who is acting out self destructively has no reason to change if they do not ever suffer major consequences for their behavior. If they are rescued from consequences, they are enabled to continue practicing their addiction.”
—Robert Burney

Enabling is often referred to as behaviors that rescue and allow alcoholics and addicts to continue their behavior without suffering the consequences. But beyond that it also relates to rescuing those who are involved in other self-destructive behaviors such as: gambling, eating disorders, the inability to keep a job, relationship addictions or having affairs, and anything else that is destructive to a person.

I’ve had experience as a full-fledged enabler of an alcoholic having lived with one for several years. It seemed at the time the best route was to let this person drink and just pick up the pieces as they fell. I took care of things to avoid problems and even called every day to ensure they would not be late for work. But with time my self-esteem was crushed and I suffered from depression and had to leave. Enabling did not save the relationship. It just delayed the loss of the relationship a few years.

We really don’t do anybody any favors when we enable an addiction or any unhealthy behavior. If we allow a bigot or male chauvinist to constantly trash talk whoever they have issues against, we are enabling. Someone who is a bigot is probably not going to change just because we tell them not to say things around us, but at least our side of the street is clean on the issue.

We are not in charge of other people’s lives. It is not always our place to voice our concerns over another’s behavior. However, it is our issue when we are in the presence of someone, or in a relationship with someone, who is carrying out actions for which we don’t approve. To say nothing is enabling. Whether or not they heed our warning is their issue, but it’s also in our best interest to walk away if the behavior does not change. We ought to not hang around for the rescue when their world comes crashing down. If we do then we are just as much a part of the wrongdoing as they are.

Enabling hurts you when you do it as well as the one you think you are helping.