Good or not?

It’s an easy, perhaps deadly, trap to fall into, to think that when something good happens, it’s for good. A trap that doesn't so much involve falling into but struggling up to.

As if good were a plateau, that if I can only toil hard enough to reach the top, get on firm ground, I’ve arrived. At good, for good.

It’s a lifelong battle for me. Particularly in my high school years, I learned to fear something good happening, because it was inevitably followed by bad, as though I were being punished if I so much as dared to note a good event, let alone enjoy it.

Good evening out with my friends? Sure to be nullified when I returned to a full-blown argument at home, beyond my control, between my siblings and/or parents. Physical violence between my brothers, emotional violence between my parents. Someone ending up in jail, my mother threatening suicide.

I was, for good reason, considered a pessimist.

Lately I’ve been attempting to recast my thinking, so that I don’t automatically assume the crash position when I detect feelings of contentment, even joy. Freeing myself from that attitude, I realize the flip side: I might dare to think that if something is good, it will—must—continue. Not only that the state of grace could be eternal, but that what I, with my limited human perception, see as good, is ultimately good.

Corollary: can I accept that seemingly bad events could lead to good? then good events could also lead to bad?

Much of various religions’ rules involve ways to stay away from the edge of the plateau, so as not to risk falling off. It’s all well and good to posit that actions have consequences, but good is not a plateau, so following the rules simply doesn’t guarantee either that bad won’t happen or that it isn’t a part of life and growth. There’s no edge to fall off.

Contributions to my musings:

1) I've been rereading the two-book “epic” by Mary Doria Russell—“The Sparrow” and “Children of God.” A thorough spiritual exercise in one person’s dark night of the soul that looks at this issue and others in a tremendously far-sighted, rich and poetic way. A most rewarding read (a true page-turner), which I commend to all.

2) The earthquake in Haiti, followed by the Rev. Pat Robertson’s self-serving abuse heaped upon unimaginable suffering.

Can I accept that good follows bad and bad follows good, without ironclad cause-and-effect? It seems like a no-brainer, but as soon as I think that, I’m back in the trap: Aha! I’ve figured out God’s ways. I’ve defined the ineffable.

Back to “I’m limited by my human perceptions and lifespan.” All I can do is try to make good choices, knowing that good things happening to me might not be the result, and then I make more choices.