Doing Good Without Knowing How it Turns Out

"You do something good. You're not always around to see how it turns out."

That's a line from an episode of one of my favourite TV shows. I was watching NCIS a couple days ago when those words were spoken. They were spoken as encouragement to someone who was feeling like they weren't doing enough good in what they did.

"You do something good. You're not always around to see how it turns out."

I think there's a lot of truth in those words. And they can apply to many aspects of life.

We can spend time doing good. Helping people in many ways. And then they're gone from our lives and we don't know the outcome of what we did.

It's frustrating. Maybe even depressing.

Especially when we're trying to help people. We want to know how what we did turned out.

But, sometimes we're just not going to see how the good we did turned out. We can't get caught up in that. We have to instead, focus on the good we did - regardless of whether we know how it turned out or not.

Ultimately, we're not responsible for how things turn out for the other person - the one we try to help. We're just responsible for what we do. For the good we are compelled to do.