Lara walks
into the living room. Miko, her five year old son, is sitting on the floor. Scattered
around him are snippets of something vaguely familiar. When he turns around,
big smile on his face and scissors in his hand, she understands where the
snippets come from.
“But
sweetheart, why have you cut my driver’s license into pieces?”
Miko’s
smile fades a little as he hears the tone in mummy’s voice.
“I needed a
picture of you”, he stretches out his hand.
“For your mother’s day card.”
In his hand
is a carefully cut out picture of her face.
When it
comes to kids, all that matters is the good intention. Lara will of course hug
her son tightly before she starts the process of getting a new driver’s license.
However, from
grown-ups, from ourselves, we can expect more.
Good intentions should not be used as an excuse for not doing well.
You may
disagree with this opinion. There are many who think that good intentions and
hard work should be enough.
Like those
who work at a company with the best of intentions, but without creating
results, who still expect a yearly raise and a promotion.
Or coaches
in sports that yell at the kids on their team, making them hate the sport they
once loved, or even worse, making them dislike themselves. Some of these
trainers say that they do it for the kids’ sake; they believe it is good for
all kids to be pushed. Such trainers may
have good intentions but if they do not bother to learn how to help all the
different persons in their team, I do not think it is good enough. (The above example is also applicable for many
bosses.)
Another
example is a story I heard recently, about an animal shelter opening in the
outskirts of Madrid. A group of young
people wanted to take care of some of the many abandoned animals. They had lots of good intentions, but not the
will to achieve the necessary knowledge, and several animals died under their
care – or rather their lack of appropriate care.
It may sound hard, but to me, it is important to not just mean well, but to do well. And that will require more than just a good intention.
Let me
conclude with a statement I use when I talk to school classes about writing and
possibly choosing that as a career:
“Follow your heart, but take your brain with you.”
Interestingly enough, the title is quite ambiguous :) Thanks for sharing the though. I wonder what triggered it into your mind.
ReplyDeleteI use to tell myself that it is harder to be coherent than to mean it, but let's keeping trying.
Well you are right, it sure is important to keep the comma there and if it is missed the title will be confusing! I have been thinking about it some time and there have been several triggers, like an article in Time about the coach I mention above and the story of the people who started a shelter in which animals died.
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to comment!
I once read about Dalai Lama's answer to a question about how to tell good actions apart from bad actions. According to him, it has nothing to do with good or bad intentions. A good action is an action with mostly good consequences. A bad action is an action with mostly bad consequences. This is called consequentialism ("konsekvensetik" in Swedish).
ReplyDeleteYour title "good intentions are not enough" would then be an understatement. A consequentialist would say that "good intentions are not what counts".
I guess this shifts our focus from your dogmas to your values, since your evaluation of the consequences is what will then determine what action you prefer.
/Hans
Thanks, I must say I agree with Dalai Lama regarding this (and much else...) :-)
Delete