If doing the right thing is the right thing, then why do we ever consider the other option, the wrong thing? Well, it’s because doing the wrong thing is usually easier. But, is it really?

Why do the wrong thing?

Sure, doing the wrong thing does feel good. It requires so much less friction.

It’s far easier (and cheaper) to pirate an expensive book than to support the author who’s dedicated years of their life to writing it. It’s easier to lose control of your emotions than to keep them in check to avoid hurting someone you love. Procrastinating on important work is far more pleasurable than starting it.

Here’s an obvious truth as well: doing the wrong thing never leads to long term satisfaction which is what we really want. Doing the wrong thing is only satisfying (and easy) in the moment. As much as you can try to avoid the long-term consequences of anything you do, they will always come back to haunt you. That’s because it’s simply our duty to do the right thing. Some choose to ignore it.

Not every criminal gets caught. Injustice sometimes triumphs in society. But do those people who do the wrong thing and manage to get away with it unscathed win anything at all?

A criminal might not get caught but they’ll have to carry the burden of their crime with them for the rest of their life, whether they feel guilty about it or not. Is that any way to live? The person who treats others unfairly only hurts themself, not anyone else.

Doing the right thing, always

Doing the right thing is an obvious solution to avoid the senseless suffering that comes with doing the wrong thing.

However, it shouldn’t seem as nice as it sounds because it isn’t. It’s supposed to be difficult. That’s the beauty of it. If doing the right thing was easy, then everyone in the world would do it.

You don’t need anyone else to force you into doing the right thing. You have that choice to make for yourself. The real people who do good are not those who seek society’s praise and recognition for their efforts, but those who aim to do it by default. That’s an ideal we should all strive for.

What is the right thing anyways?

When you do something wrong and you don’t fufill your duty of being a good person to others, it doesn’t feel right. That feeling is quite hard to put into words.

How does it feel to walk past a homeless person and do nothing to help them when you can? Sure, you may have your own things to do; it’s not your problem. You may have no money to spare. You don’t even know who this person is either. But they’re still a human worthy of love and compassion, aren’t they?

I’m not trying to point the finger at anyone. But it’s so easy to make excuses in times like this and it can seem as if we’re all evil people. Really, moments like this show that deep down as humans, we’re made for good, so we have no reason not to do good.

You feel that way as you’re about to do something wrong because you know it’s wrong. Each of us has an innate sense of right and wrong which we’ve honed over our years of existence even though we go against it sometimes.

Like Socrates said, no person knowingly does evil. That statement can sound absurd when you look at the atrocities certain humans have committed in the past and are carrying out right now. This doesn’t mean that what those people have done and are doing is necessarily right. Their sense of right and wrong has just become misguided.

You have to hone your own sense of right and wrong always. Keep it finely tuned. Don’t lie to yourself. There really is no right and wrong if you think about it, only what we believe is right or wrong, so we must choose wisely then.

The ultimate choice

Nobody’s forcing you to do the right thing so you have to force yourself. You don’t have to follow any crowd. Be a high agency individual.

The beauty of being human is the freedom we have to experience life however we want. Nothing can take that away from us even in our darkest moments. Like the Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl wrote in his book Man’s Search for Meaning:

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

You never have to take the easy option if you don’t want to. That’s a thought to dwell on for a second. We are all capable of doing good as second nature, without any thought or excuses, if we choose to.

Just remember this when you’re faced with a difficult decision: you will regret making the morally wrong choice. You will have to live with that horrible, restless feeling of guilt inside you. Your own mind will turn against you and torture you. You can avoid that agony by simply doing the right thing. Why choose the other option?