Your ethical will: What is a good person?

Welcome back to Twelve essential questions to tell a life story. By joining me in twelve blog posts you will create what Rabbi Leder calls your ethical will.

By answering the questions your loved ones will get to know you deeper and you will understand yourself better. Let your memories bring meaning!

To join – read the blog posts, reflect on the questions and write your own answers. You are very welcome to share them in the comments.

Welcome on an interesting journey!

What is a good person?

Well, that is quite a question isn’t it?

I somehow hesitate to answer it, because, who am I to judge? Who am I to say what is good or bad or evil?

I often quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet: 

“There is nothing either good or bad

It’s only our thinking that makes it so”

The same goes for there not being either good or bad people. It is only our thinking that makes us consider someone good and someone else bad. 

As Alexandr Solzhenitsyn so eloquently wrote: 

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

Alright, now that we have concluded that there is no such thing as a good or a bad person (unless our thinking makes it so) and that good and evil cuts through, rather than between us…

What is a good person then?

One answer in Steve’s book goes:

“I never lie to my kids or cheat on my taxes. But if I needed to lie to protect my family, such as many Jews did during the Holocaust, then I would without question. And I’d still consider myself a good person.”

So what’s my answer?

What immediately comes to mind is the saying: 

Live and let live. 

One of my book releases had that theme. Maybe you were there?

Live and let Live is something I want to live by. It goes hand in hand with the quote by Hamlet above. Who am I to say what is good or bad, right or wrong, for someone else?

To me, a good person lives and lets others live in whatever way they choose. 

Another definition that comes to my mind are the 10 characteristics of highly evolved beings as described by Neale Donald Walsh. Out of these 10 I choose 3 to describe what a good person is to me: 

A good person treats everyone and everything with great care and respect.

A good person doesn’t bring anyone to justice. They do not punish.

A good person reaches out with love, knowing that only love heals all wounds and transforms people. 

Now, let me know what you think. 

What is a good person for you?