Fifth Perspective
Goodwill: An Interlude
1 Goodwill is love particularized, is love in moral action.
2 Goodwill: A kindly feeling: well-wishing, benevolence, friendliness; a will acting freely from pure disinterested motives; an open, charitable attitude, without reservation or bitterness; a willingness to be fair-minded or impartial; good intention; virtuous inclination or disposition; cheerful consent; heartiness; readiness.
3 Goodwill is the man of action’s religion.
4 Goodwill is to be applied not only to others but to oneself as well — especially toward oneself!
5 A person of goodwill is always ready for a smile — she can’t help herself. He brightens the day just as does the sun; but she has one advantage over the sun: she even brightens a sunless day.
6 Goodwill is love anthropomorphized.
7 She of goodwill surely gets angry, but never in spite or resentment, or rancor. Good-willed anger is anger justified and gauged rightly.
8 Goodwill can’t but help being on the verge of joyful tears of love and sympathy toward everyone worthy of it.
9 Goodwill is just that: willed goodness — goodness strong and directed; goodness wrapped in refined judgment and subtle sensitivity.
10 The man-woman of goodwill suffers, grieves, yes; but his goodwill toward himself will not permit him to despond in his pain.
11 Goodwill is not in the least concerned with being right all the time; what is being right in comparison to freedom from psychic tension? Goodwill fears not in the least being silly, childlike, sentimental, demonstrative; for these responses recapture the spontaneous, simple innocence of the child that stays within us all through our lives, however stifled.
12 “Oh happy! happy!” cries out goodwill: “Be happy! Be happy! It is your inheritance. Put away pettiness, enlarge yourself.”
13 Not a giggling, bubbling, saccharine goodwill, but a goodwill of effervescence, wit, and grace.
14 Consideration is the scepter of goodwill’s rule.
15 How can you lust in animal-ego for that whom you love or have goodwill toward?
16 Goodwill inspires love … or is it love that inspires goodwill … or is it both ways?
17 Love does not always touch; but goodwill does; it is here and now and immediate.
18 Goodwill is the true incentive for self-refinement.
19 Goodwill is patient above all else.
20 “Put on your fool’s cap and bells,” teaches our prophet, Nietzsche, “Go to wreck!” he declaims. Who cares about money! about security! about possessions! Give me goodwill, and all else will fall into place “for rich or for poor, in health and in sickness, in life or in death.”
21 Sing! Dance! Kick up your heels! Have the time of your life! — for your goodwill frees you unto this innocence.
22 What’s that! You take me for a fool? A naive simpleton of love? You in your taut austerity? If only you knew with what wisdom I make my way in my foolishness. Do you not see that I have the absurdity of life by its tail — that I have overcome it! I have overcome myself!
23 Free yourself! Smile inside as well as outside in goodwill toward all — yes, even your enemy – him-her especially. And not in order to “pour hot coals on his head, ” but in order to make him smile too.
24 Goodwill gives you the courage to be yourself. No trembling; you say what is to be said firmly and decidedly without anger or animosity.
The Love Testament 