Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday

by God. Too many believers seem to think that belief is enough. How
many people who claim to be of this religion or that one, if caught
and investigated, would be found guilty of living the tenets of love
and charity and selflessness?
Action is what matters.
Pick up the phone and make the call to tell someone what they
mean to you. Share your wealth. Run for office. Pick up the trash you
see on the ground. Step in when someone is being bullied. Step in
even if you’re scared, even if you might get hurt. Tell the truth.
Maintain your vows, keep your word. Stretch out a hand to someone
who has fallen.
Do the hard good deeds. “You must do the thing you cannot do,”
Eleanor Roosevelt said.
It will be scary. It won’t always be easy, but know that what is on
the other side of goodness is true stillness.
Think of Dorothy Day, and indeed, many other less famous
Catholic nuns, who worked themselves to the bone helping other
people. While they may have lacked for physical possessions and
wealth, they found great comfort in seeing the shelters they had
provided, and the self-respect they’d restored for people whom
society had cast aside. Let us compare that to the anxiety of the
helicopter parents who think of nothing but which preschool to
enroll their toddler in, or the embezzling business partner who is just
one audit away from getting caught. Compare that to the nagging
insecurity we feel knowing that we are not living the way we should
or that we are not doing enough for other people.
If you see fraud, and do not say fraud, the philosopher Nassim
Taleb has said, you are a fraud. Worse, you will feel like a fraud. And
you will never feel proud or happy or confident.
Will we fall short of our own standards? Yes. When this happens,
we don’t need to whip ourselves, as Clamence did, we must simply let
it instruct and teach us, as all injuries do.
That’s why twelve-step groups ask their members to be of service
as part of their recovery. Not because good deeds can undo the past,
but because they help get us out of our heads, and in the process,
help us write the script for a better future.
If we want to be good and feel good, we have to do good.