Ways
of
Acting

You know it's not enough just to know

the difference between good and bad.

What matters is the way that people behave.

They see and feel things in different ways,

but what is most important to their lives

and the lives of the people around them

is their Actions.

For instance,

Anger can be a bad emotion to feel,

but it is only bad for others if those feelings become Actions.

Actions are not just about doing things.

There may be some things that we have to do

even if we don't feel like doing them.

But there are also things that we have to not do

even when it feels like we want to do them,

and whether they are acts of doing or not doing,

there are Right Actions and Wrong Actions.

And Right or Wrong,

some kinds of Actions

are more important than others.

People don't always know what things are good and bad for them. These are things that they have to learn.

Babies come into the world and are hardly able to do anything for themselves,

and before they can do things they need to learn the meaning of things for themselves.

They need to learn what is good and bad for them.

One of the first things that babies need to learn is the difference between what is clean and what is dirty.

Like most animals, when they are still very little they only know some things about the way their bodies work.

They know that one end has holes which let in light and sound and air,

and a hole that sucks stuff in to stop their stomachs hurting when they are hungry.

And at the other end they have holes from which

they can push stuff out when it makes them uncomfortable.

But they don't know what makes something good or bad to eat or drink.

And they don't know that the stuff that comes out at the other end is full of what the body doesn't want or need.

That it is poisonous stuff, waste products that are bad for the body to keep inside.

They have to learn that what comes out of one end

should be kept away from what goes into the other end.

What comes out is dirty, and what goes in must be clean.

Sometimes babies grow all the way up to being adults

without ever understanding how dangerous it is

to let stuff from their toilets get mixed up with what they eat and drink.

They don't see how keeping clean is good for them.

They never learned it.

People often go through life without learning the ways to act that make life better for them.

So let's see if we can find out the best ways to behave.

How can doing what seems bad for us be good for us?

How can doing what seems hard make things easier for us?

How can doing what seems good for us be bad for us?

How can doing what seems easy make things harder for us?