Blog This Challenge Number 39, and the theme is 'good deeds'. I wasn't going to enter this one, but I was just having a chat with the Man and....
It seems we have very different viewpoints when it comes to good deed doing.
I am a self confessed good deed do-er-er. I like to do little things to make people smile. I like to buy people random presents (and not just my kids), give people random compliments ("What beautiful children you have!") and do little things like, say, pay the toll for the person behind me (now null and void, thanks very much EWay tag).
As far as I'm concerned, it's all about karma, baby. What I send out comes back threefold. And heaven knows I would want people to be kind to me and mine.
The Man, however, sees things a leedle differently. He has been telling me since we got together that "No good deed goes unpunished". In fact, I think he most recently said that just on Easter Sunday, when we took a kilo of prawns to a rello's house for lunch. Which then didn't get bought out to the table, and were put in their freezer instead.
"No good deed goes unpunished" intones the Man, sounding very much like the Blackboard from Mr Squiggle. Remember him?
Kudos to Hilary Talbot of spiritsdancing.com- I pinched your photo.
But, you see, I think I know what the problem here is. The Man does good deeds, and expects them to be returned, in some fashion. He simply has too much faith in people. I do good deeds and, while a 'Thank you" never goes astray, I don't expect anymore back than that. Because most people are inherently selfish bastards, and there's not much that can be done about that. Hey, I'm guilty of being a selfish bastard myself on occasion.
And isn't that just the essence of good deed doing? Do unto others, as you would have them do to you. Not do unto others, so they will do the same back for you? It is, after all, a big circle, and it will come back to you in the end, good or bad, one way or another.
7 comments:
Nice entry Lori. I tend to agree with you rather than your husband - sometimes its nice to chip in 50c when the person in front of you at the checkout is short, or give up the closest carpark to the older person coming the opposite direction, you know? It'll come back to you threefold in the end....
So so true.
Hi Lori...
Award waiting for you at my blog....
I have to admit - I agree with both of you. I like helping others out and believe in the whole "what goes round comes round" thing. But being nice has bit me in the arse more than once. I keep doing it though - despite hubby's "I told you so's"
so true :) I like your thinking Lori :)
Hi Lori,
Hmm... I am somewhere between the two of you. I don't think a good deed needs to be returned (that defeats the purpose of doing something 'just because') but that said...
I am disappointed when a good deed goes unnoticed and had the prawn thing happened to me, I would have been secretly MIFFED!! (but not deterred from continuing on with good deeds... just maybe not for that particular recipient for a while :)
on this matter, i am starting to become less like your husband and more like you. whether that's right or wrong, i don't know. but it certainly makes me less stressed which is what i am gunning for.
nice post.
and all these people with buttons...i have to learn how to do this.
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