In that stillness of now, there is not just peace. Not just the absence of suffering. In that stillness is the presence of something truly good, of goodness itself.
We so often think of goodness in terms of being in accordance with some divine law commanded from on high. In this conception, some authority defines goodness for us, and then we spend our lives trying to abide by their definition.
But there’s a different way of thinking about it: Goodness isn’t handed down to us. It isn’t obeyed. It’s already here, in you, a reality waiting only to be noticed, a current to be in flow with, a frequency to tune into. It’s the natural way of things.
For our purposes, we can think of goodness as simply whatever nourishes and promotes the flourishing of something else beyond it.
Goodness in this sense has nothing to do with our notions of good and evil or right and wrong. Goodness is simply whatever fills our cups, whatever fertilizes our soil. When we tap into it, this basic goodness nourishes and sustains us.
But it does not stop there.
When we are nourished in this way, we naturally live our lives in a way that nourishes the world. We make our lives a flow of goodness through us to those around us.
This is the basic goodness antiheroes seek to cultivate and share: the flow of nourishment through them and out into the world through their actions and their presence.
This is an excerpt from my upcoming book The Antihero’s Journey: From Burnout to Real Contribution in Polycrisis Times. To read other excerpts, go here.
