There is good in each of us — an abiding need and desire to create, contribute, help, sustain, and foster. We (all of us) desperately need this innate quality in others. Desperately. Need-for-oxygen desperately. Indeed, it is this quality upon which we depend moment-to-moment for the survival of the race.
We need more of it.
As a matter of profound practicality and sparing all platitudes, we cannot — cannot — gain access to this precious, irreplaceable resource by focusing on that which is wrong. Like the stewards we are, we must treat it like any other natural resource.
To be a little more specific, will you allow me to use an agricultural metaphor?
Weed suppression is indeed important in the gardens of our lives. Yet attacking weeds is not enough to grow that which sustains. Further, if we lose focus on what we are trying to grow, weed suppression turns into mindless violence that eventually destroys everything. If we can’t see the good, how do we know what ought, in our current frame of mind, to be discouraged or removed?
Generosity is not a bauble among character traits. We can’t live without.