“The greater good is rarely outweighed by one’s self interest,” Howard Stark, Endgame.  There are so many gems in this movie and I wrote about one years ago spoken from Freya regarding failing at who we are “supposed” to be—that one always hits me no matter how many times I hear it because the simple truth is no one in this world is supposed to be anything other than who they are no matter what people pressure them into feeling.  When we review this quote from the Stark character, I consider the entire character arc of Tony Stark, going from complete narcissist to somewhere in between, knowing he needs to use his gifts for good.  Understanding how the world works and using it for personal gain and then turning that power into something that can help the world.  And here we have a line from his father talking about the lessening of the self to help the greater good—both wanted to help, each did it in their own way.  The ironic part of it, and something that I credit the Tony Stack character for is understanding that if we don’t know who we are and honor ourselves then we aren’t able to do the world a damn bit of good.  While our own interest can be detrimental to the world, sacrificing who we are is just as detrimental.  The latter is demonstrated by the Howard Stark character lost time with his family for helping others while Tony finds himself with his family—the last place he thought he would.

So how do we understand the greater good in this context?  We need to understand that while our personal interests can hurt the world if we don’t balance it with using those gifts, we need to know ourselves well enough to develop who we are so we can be of service.  This is essentially what I was writing about the other day when I spoke of God’s purpose for us. Our purpose was never meant for personal gain in spite of being OUR purpose.  That gift is meant to benefit as many people as possible—and that is true for all of us as we all have a gift that we need to develop and learn about and turn into something we can share with the world.  That isn’t to say that all of our gifts will have that kind of reach.  We need to remember the butterfly effect and the ripple effect and understand that, while some of our actions can seem small, those actions may impact someone else’s life to the point where they make the change the world is looking for.  We are all a web. 

So with that in mind, what would we do differently? What can we change moving forward? Would we go back if we could?  Live those moments differently?  Or do we learn to make peace with it and simply move forward as we are?  Stop pretending to be someone else, lost in a memory or regret.  Just be.  I find that as much as I wish to change what happened and make it what my version of right is, that we can’t do that.  So the desire to change what was becomes the catalyst and the opportunity to do something different and still effect change even if it wasn’t how we thought originally.  I don’t know all the answers, none of us do.  But I do know that there is some reason for everything and that we will find it eventually.  And even if we don’t (which I’m not saying will happen) I will take some solace in the fact that I can and did do the best I could while I am/was here.  That’s all I have control over—my actions and decisions here and now.  I will use that knowledge to make the best choices based on who I am and how I can do the most good.  That’s all we can do.