Good­ness is a long lost attribute and much maligned these days since a “good” per­son is an easy mark for many of the manip­u­la­tive peo­ple one meets.

But those who are tru­ly “good” have a spe­cial qual­i­ty which makes all our lives better.

I believe infants and chil­dren are real­ly “good” before we con­t­a­m­i­nate them with our mate­ri­al­is­tic world and lack of care. I believe in the innate good­ness of young children.

It is with­in our pow­er to make the world a bet­ter place if we only do every­thing we can to retain the innate good­ness in our infants and young children.

It doesn’t take long to make chil­dren manip­u­la­tive – my guess is by the time they are 3 years old most mod­ern chil­dren have learned to be manip­u­la­tive. Most­ly of course they manip­u­late their par­ents to buy them toys and clothes.

But I am inter­est­ed in why chil­dren even need to manip­u­late their par­ents at such a ten­der age when we as par­ents should be lov­ing and car­ing for them and intro­duc­ing them to the world.

They only manip­u­late to try and get some­thing they don’t even understand.

Chil­dren need the good­ness of oth­ers to be the best they can be.

I was priv­i­leged to have a “good” father. By that I mean he was full of good­ness towards every­one. He wasn’t a pushover, he didn’t manip­u­late peo­ple, he wasn’t reli­gious, but he was a tru­ly “good” per­son and he always fought for the rights of oth­er “good” people.

In my life I have been priv­i­leged to meet many tru­ly “good” peo­ple of var­i­ous ages. They give of them­selves, their time, their exper­tise, with­out ask­ing. They have heart and soul. They have heal­ing powers.

Good­ness is one of those intan­gi­ble things but if you are open to receiv­ing it (and prob­a­bly if you give it your­self) you will see it in others.

Life is rich­er and bet­ter and leaves you with more smiles each day that you come in con­tact with a real­ly “good” person.

Think about being “good” to some­one today. I’m about to write my respons­es and thank yous to a brief let­ter I received last week from a tru­ly “good” per­son and also to a moth­er of at least two (I haven’t met the third child) won­der­ful 21 year olds I met a few weeks ago (I saw one of them with their grand­moth­er and even though I’d for­got­ten the fam­i­ly name I imme­di­ate­ly knew whose son it was).

One per­son at a time we can make this world a bet­ter place. 

Don’t stop – for the “good” of us all.