HIPS: Act, Don’t Wait, When It Comes To Doing The Right Thing

By Bryan Hyde

COMMENTARY -- We all have a tendency to wait for someone with superior knowledge, courage or morality to ride to our rescue and save the day.

But the painful truth is that’s not going to happen. And that’s not a bad thing.

It simply means that we have to become the kind of individuals who recognize a need, pick a spot and get to work. It’s not enough to try to outsource them to others.

We have to be willing to act.

It takes courage to make your feet move when you aren’t sure where your next step will lead. The difficulty is compounded when we’re not sure where to begin.

This is where it’s tempting to ask someone else to tell us what to do. But this is a mistake.

In order to affect authentic change, we have to freely choose our own course of action. 

The best results are what happens when our efforts are aligned with our own gifts and sense of purpose. That means we can’t simply carry out another person’s orders or follow the crowd.

Tapping into that personal mission requires equal measures of humility, determination and desire to serve the people around us. It can take many different forms.

Those who reach out to suicidal, the disenfranchised, the hungry, the lonely, the captive or the ill are measurably improving the world -- even if their efforts are largely unrecognized. 

For those on the receiving end of their efforts, the world has been changed.

That’s what counts.

* Hyde In Plain Sight is written by KDXU personality Bryan Hyde. Catch his daily HIPS vignette at 7:50-ish every weekday morning on KDXU and listen to The Bryan Hyde Show weekends at 7 p.m. Saturday and 6 p.m. Sunday nights.