For the longest time, I had thought a good person was someone who didn’t lie, didn’t cheat, didn’t steal. This, however, is strikingly filled with negation, and I think it is not enough. I have been working towards a more positive morality, where I live by doing what is right, rather than by not doing what is wrong. However, how do we know what this right action is?

Right action is not about a precise calculation to determine one’s optimal course. Not to presuppose the existence of such an entity, but I believe that only an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being would have the right to make such a judgement. As limited, mortal beings, we are entangled in our biased, subjective, narrow-sighted experience. For this, we will never truly be able to say whether any act we take is absolutely right.

Are we then to give up? Even if we could know right from wrong, as imperfect humans we are bound to slip up eventually.

You will never reach a state where you can say that you are definitively a good person, and from that point onward you are free to do as you please. Virtue is not an endpoint, rather it is a process. Virtue is acknowledging that all of life is a development. Virtue is putting in the work to make the work-in-progress progress. Even if we cannot say exactly what the absolute good is, so long as you can see a step forward to a world that is better, then that is enough.

This still begs the question, how do we know what is better? What I have decided is that I will do what I believe is right. Sometimes it stems from a rational reasoning, but other times it does just come from gut intuition. I am just trying to listen to my conscience. I do feel like there is a certain attraction inside me towards what is good, and I am trying to be honest to that pull.