Doing What's Right

What is right?

It's a question I seem to be asking myself more and more in these days of confusion. Me, I think I know the answer: working towards the eudaimonia of all living beings is what's right. At least, I think that's the right thing to do.

The problem comes when I look at other people. I'm...well, I personally don't know who or what I am any more (to be perfectly frank), and due to my youth and inexperience I tend to look up to people, even though I'm not one for idols. But youth fades, time passes and twats with nothing better to do (like me! Should have been partying and being sociable, but instead I wonder how the world works!) start to question things.

You see, I doubt I could have ever considered myself a proper leftist, a proper liberal, a proper anything. I'm a nothing, drifting from group to group, desperately seeking like-minded people...seeking less than that, actually. Seeking to belong. Because I don't belong, not to this world where people seem to move so easily and yet I find it so difficult, and despite all of the inspirational quotes, despite all of the advice, despite 16 years of not belonging hitting me in the face with a lesson, I'm still prideful enough, still stupid enough, still desperate enough to try and seek out some place to belong, just to stop the gnawing feelings of isolation, just to stop the literal pains my mind creates. But, to stop waffling on and actually get back to the point I was discussing, I thought I had found a group of like-minded people who, like me, wanted to make the world a better place. I found people I looked up to, admired, respected.

Like the naive little thing I am, I don't doubt that these people want to make the world a better place - as most of us do at some level. But I think they are going about it the wrong way and perhaps pronounce judgement without knowing what they're talking about.

I have been a doubter for the longest of times; if something doesn't fit into place, I doubt it. If I don't understand something, I question it. And this gets confusing and painful and very, very isolating...And I'm an idiotic doubter, to boot. I started doubting others because they said that they wanted to make the world a better place, yet they were prepared to kill, to create suffering, to do it. Now, this conflicts with my ideas about trying to prevent and alleviate suffering in order to make the world a better place - but why didn't I question that? Why did I question the people I used to look up to, but not question myself?

I'm scared, too. Like the coward I am, I'm always scared. Those people I grow disillusioned with are out there fighting for what they think's right and fighting against the people they consider to be compromising the cause. By doubting them, am I compromising the cause? Am I actually just going down a road to more suffering? Am I taking the comfortable option, the cosy option, the one that preserves me at the expense of others? And even if I weren't taking that option, would I really be doing anything useful? Some say no. I say I do nothing useful anyway, that I am incapable of doing anything useful because of my own selfishness and weakness, that doing nothing means I let others suffer and doing something, anything, doesn't make a blind bit of difference.

Perhaps for me to have ever even considered I could do something good for others is laughable.