I spend a ridiculous amount of time contemplating what it means to be a Good Human.

Not a Perfect Human — those do not exist. Just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill Good Human.

It seems important to have a Good Human job description, so to speak, and so I don’t think it is wasted effort to spend time pondering what exactly it means to be a Good Human. After all, how can I be a Good Human if I don’t have a sense of what that even means?

I agree with Aristotle that there is something important about having the right amount of all the important virtues if one cares about being a Good Human. Not too much, not too little — just the exact right amount. This is illustrated in Aristotle’s quote about anger:

“Anybody can become angry; that is easy. But to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way—that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

That does, of course, beg the question, “who decides what right means?” More to think about 🤯

When I was a graduate student, I had an Ashleigh Brilliant Pot-Shot (remember those?!) over my desk that said, “I don't have any solution, but I certainly admire the problem.”

I think admiring a problem — or a question — might be a great first step to pondering our way towards a solution or answer.

I don’t know the perfect amount of virtues that make up a Good Human — and it seems okay that I don’t know and that I spend a lot of time thinking about it.

Because when we recognize that we don’t have the exact right answer (yet!), we are invited to keep trying to find it and I think that is how imperfect humans get closer and closer and closer to what we aspire to be and do.

And doesn’t every dog deserve a Good Human?