Eadarian Network

Hello my friend,

Welcome to the 32nd installment of The Creative Journey, the experience of one Charles Yerkes, Eadarian Poet, perpetuator, and otherwise mildly creative and excessively modest personage.

Intent, motive, the driving force, – the reason why.

This is more important than what is done. I know that sounds almost counter intuitive. Yet it is this fact which often makes a specific action acceptable and beneficial in one instance and completely not so in the next.

I can sense the doubt starting to fly. But there is an old saying, let’s see… how does it go… ah yes, “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven.” How can this be – without a great deal of hypocrisy – unless the motive, the intent is the difference?

Yes, there is also the saying that starts, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions…” But that saying most often applies to the intentions that give us warm fuzzies and not the ones, which are followed through with thought and practicality to achieve the end that is intended. For example, the good intention of praising a fellow worker on a job well done – but doing so without consideration for what that person considers praise and what they consider embarrassing. So with out thought and the practicality of learning which is which. We could intend to praise, but wind up humiliating and embarrassing the individual instead.

Say a person finds public accolades embarrassing, that instead of getting a sense of pride and uplift from such, they find humiliation at all the attention. There are some individuals for whom this is true. We want to praise them and let them know how well they did, so at a company party we stand up and with everyone paying attention to us, we call out this individual and make what they perceive as a spectacle out of them. We have not really praised this individual or made them feel we appreciate what they have done; instead they are now embarrassed by what was have done.

Here the intent, only followed part way, gave us a warm feeling of doing good, but did nothing, or even worse, did actual harm; if not physically then certainly socially and emotionally.

See, since there was no follow through on actually finding out how this person best receives praise, or at least what they regard as being praised, harm has been done, for now instead of feeling great, they may even be resentful. For there was no true consideration of them, there was no investigation into what was really needed. And no matter how great sounding the intention, the intent was really only about selfish satisfaction, not about really praising the other person, because if it were, we would have taken the time to learn what would have actually praised that person.

In any event, this is not what is being talked about in this post, well in a way it is. For here the motive, the true intent, was self gratification – the gratification of doing something nice – the praise was merely a vehicle for this to be achieved; since the good thing stated was in no way genuinely pursued. If you doubt this, notice how quickly the same folks who act in this manner, get defensive and offended when the object of their warm fuzzy is embarrassed and offended at their attempt. “Why, how dare they feel offended, don’t they know what I …” and you can fill in the blanks after that, I’m sure.

The noble – non-sissy life is always checking its intent and making sure that what they intend is executed in a way that actually accomplishes the stated intent. So here, praise for the worker would actually be done in a way that is seen as praise, and not something less than that.

For once the follow through is done, and it is learned what they would consider acknowledgements, very public and very loud, to be true praise, and you do so, your intent has achieved its stated end. But if your follow through shows other forms of praise are actually preferred, then you would do those and you would be admired for it.

Now the example here is of praising someone as they really need to be, but this applies to any intent or action. Always make sure you have investigated what is really needed, and not what you merely think is needed. Otherwise your intent is all about you feeling good and not about really helping. And it does take a big non-sissy type of person to see and act on this.

Wow, this take on intent was not what was intended when this installment began, but here it is. I’ll pick up with the original thought next time.

Until next time my friend.

Live Nobly, Live Well

Charles Yerkes
Eadarian Poet, Perpetuator, Photographer, and Fiddle Player

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To choose a past installment(s) of The Creative Journey click here. To view a Quote of the Week, click here.

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