Action, Not Intention

After class on Monday, I feel like I've been struggling with what my own ethics are. Questions were raised about why a person seeks to lead a moral life and how one goes about doing this, and I realized that I have never explicitly hoped to be a good person. That has never been a goal of my life; it actually never crossed my mind. I have always been so fixated on career and on the things that make me happy and that make me smarter or a better friend, but I have never thought about being a truly good person. So when that thought crossed my mind, I immediately decided that I must not be a good person, since that is not what I have been striving for.

But the more I've thought about it, the more I realized that, for me at least, I don't need to try to be a good person. Not in those terms, anyways. My parents are fond of saying that Aristotle thought that virtue was a habit. This means that it is something practiced constantly -- an end goal rather than a quality that one possesses. In my mind, this equates virtue with action, not intention. I believe that what a person does is what qualifies them as good or moral, and what makes them able to say that virtue is a habit of theirs. I don't think that true virtue or morality is found through constantly striving for it; of course, people who do seek morality above all things or through certain methods are not immoral for that, but neither are they always more moral than another person. There's a book I like where a character says that his God doesn't require that people think of Him, only that they think at all. I feel like morality is this way too. Someone doesn't need to think, "Is this action moral?" or "Am I moral?" in such explicit terms. They only have to carry out an action or live their lives in accordance with what they feel to be right.

I don't agree with applying words like "good" or "moral" or "virtuous" to people or to their actions. I think that people and actions must speak for themselves, moving forward with the intention of fulfilling goals and creating connections and making choices. Virtue and goodness comes when, in the process of seeking these things, a person thinks of others too and is willing to adjust behavior so that no harm comes to anyone else. This is how I try to live my life. I have to put my needs and dreams first, and then I can apply this happiness to my relationships and my community, always pushing myself to avoid harming others. I live according to the values that I agree with, but I really try not to hold myself to any standard of morality, because I don't think that that's realistic for me. Even if it doesn't make me a good person by other people's standards, it is what makes my life the happiest and most fulfilling.