Write your own story

There is a famous quote, from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”. But what does the famous author mean by this quote, that there is no good, or does he mean that there is no evil or does he mean that reality is not what we see with our eyes?

I have a different quote of my own to bounce off of Shakespeare… “good believes itself, but evil of itself does naught”.

What I mean by this is that the belief in good allows it to multiply, and by necessity, endures and proliferates. But evil, which is only a suggestion, has no power in and of itself, and only has power IF it can convince others.

I just read a review of a book where the author of the “autobiography” is cited as writing “fiction” because she describes her mother as warm and loving. The reviewer said that “extensive research” done on the mother by some university, proved that her mother could not have been warm and loving therefore the “good” description of the mother is now called “autobiographical fiction.” The reviewer for some unknown reason, is compelled to convince others that what a daughter says is good about her mother, is not true.

Isn’t it ironic, that a reviewer with far flung standards, and far removed from the actual lives of those individuals, is, herself, being subjective and fraught with judgement and personal bias while pointing a finger and saying the same? Just because a group of people at a “universidad” believe something, does that make it so? Does the belief of another diminish the realities of our own experiences?

So let me see if I get this right, someone who never met the mother but who read distant “research” is better able to describe ACCURATELY, the life of a girl who wrote an autobiography of her own mother who raised her? Is it not possible that the girl, who knew the nuances of her mother’s behavior, attributed them to the difficulties of parenting, and still loved and respected the way her mother raised her and correctly viewed her life as good?

Jesus is recorded as saying “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Doesn’t loving someone have to include a perception or awareness of the good that person has done and continues to do in spite of their mistakes? If Jesus represents the human example of God’s love, He does not speak about research that says that God did this bad thing or that bad thing. His only awareness of his father is one of good.
And because he believes in that good, it propagates and even heals.

But, I am not opposed to research So if someone wants to speak of research, there was research done on a classroom of low level performing students. The teacher was told the opposite however and believed that these students were gifted and talented. Because she “believed” in the good of these students, they believed it as well, and when they were tested at the end of the year, they actually performed at a level of those who were gifted and talented. What was the actual “truth” about these students?
The good that they were believed to have, took root, blossomed and proliferated. I believe that they were indeed gifted and talented.

In another research “test”, men who had knee injuries who played professional sports, were told that they had corrective arthroscopic surgery on the knee, but only some of them actually had the surgery. The rest of the men were put in a room where the surgery was simulated. Years later, the group who never actually had the surgery, but believed that they had the surgery, also believed themselves to be healed, and were functioning well, just like those who had the actual surgery. Again the belief in good as a power broadened its range.

Now I do not know about you, but I am not going to choose to believe in sickness, disease and evil, when I can believe in health, natural immunities, and good. Why would I?

And in the same way I am not going to “critically” review an author who chooses to see the good of her own family, or call it “autobiographical fiction”. Why is it so hard to believe that people are basically good and that we are as a people, called to honor our fathers and mothers and see the good in our neighbors?

It does not mean for us to honor our fathers and mothers only when they are perfect…as we can see in an example in the bible with Noah. He became intoxicated, and one of his three sons did not cover him but instead went and talked ill of his father. But it says then that “Shem and Japheth took a garment and placed it across their shoulders, and walking backward, they covered their father’s nakedness. Their faces were turned away so that they did not see their father’s nakedness”. The son who saw evil in his father, was cursed because by seeing AND MAGNIFYING evil instead of refusing to see evil, he brought that evil into his own experience.
There are many flaws that seem detectable or important to document in humanity, but instead of loving the “flaws”, we are supposed to love and honor the good that we see. In order to love what we see, we have to FIRST be able to SEE the good, especially when bad is trying to take center stage. It is hard to love bad is it not? For people who consistently only see good, evil can only present itself as accomplishing good by using an evil method. That is how Jesus was tempted, because Jesus who only saw good, was told that all this power would be his if he would only bow down to evil. Jesus refused to see evil or give it any platform in his thinking and told evil to begone.

That view of acknowledging good, perfects our own environment and the environment of others. Why would we want to do anything less than that for our neighbors. Those who choose to see evil, apparently, like the son of Noah, cause their own demise.
The reviewer also says that the author never “achieved success” after writing her initial “fictional autobiographical” book. Perhaps the author, as opposed to the reviewer, does not define success from a monetary perspective but rather from the perspective of a warm and affectionate relationship with her own family members, something that cannot happen when capitalizing on the nuances of any individual’s private life.

When writing our own story, we have the choice to pay attention to the good, or pay attention to the bad. One view might make money, but it destroys itself, the other might not be financially profitable, but it heals and uplifts. I know which view I choose to write about. Both views might seem real, or something that we can SEE or RESEARCH with our eyes, but we can know from studying the bible, that our “kingdom” is indeed within us and depends on our individual choices of what we believe is truth.