This may be more of a GD than an IMHO…
So I had this very, very interesting dream last night. I dreamed I was on the run from the FBI with my family. I sneaked out of our hiding place and bought food for them and made sure they were safe. As far as I knew, I’d done nothing wrong. As the dream progressed, it was revealed that I was personally responsible for the WTC attack, and the government was chasing after bin Laden to make me think I was off the hook. (This part of the dream contained the most spectacular explosion footage I’ve ever had in a dream - seriously, it was amazing.)
I finally sat down with a female FBI agent in a cafe, and tried to explain that I was genuinely sorry for what I’d done, and that I was considering turning myself in, but was afraid of the penalty. She said “Yeah, you’ll get death for sure.”
That dream got me thinking. How do I know I’m on the side of Good and not Evil? I know everyone likes to think of themselves as basically good, but what have I done that proves my affiliation? I started making a list of all the things I’ve done that have been beneficial to others. I helped rebuild a wetland, I let people cry on my shoulder, I’ve done extra work for people who couldn’t.
But maybe I’m part of something - a social structure, a movement, an idea - that will become so heinous future historians won’t be able to justify it or even analyze it very much. (I’m not going to invoke Godwin’s Law, so for example, Stalin’s purges.) They’ll only look at it and shake their heads in disbelief.
So. How do you know you’re good? (Not based on what you haven’t done or what you believe, but what you’ve done.)