Indicative behaviour

 In the book Becoming God, there is a concept I pursue about who we become and who we are when we are not ourselves. I would like to softly introduce that concept to you (would appreciate hearing your criticism and thoughts on it). That things you do, things you’ve done become you, they offer sight into who you could be. Does not guarantee it, but assures the possibility. And that’s the thing, that is what I will refer to as indicative behaviour.

You convince yourself that the bad things you do are out of character for you, that you would not normally do them and yet this is how they become normality. You lie to someone you think less of and that’s your excuse for lying but in truth,  that’s how you become a liar. You accuse people of deserving your hurt and you think it's because they are bad people but you see, you hurt someone, and you become the villain. And I know what you are thinking, everyone's a villain in someone's story, right? But this isn’t about the story, this is about you now becoming a villain and what it means. It means in the middle of the justification and self-uphealing of your villainy you'll lose yourself and you will hurt innocent people, you will hurt people you love all this time saying to yourself, I could never do the bad things I do to people I do not love to people I love. But it slowly becomes you, it becomes inevitable.

You do not get to become the juror and the punisher, it offsets the balance. You either admit that they are a bad person for what they did and do your best to not be affected so much by someone you convince us means so little to you or you retaliate and it becomes like looking into a mirror. Understanding indicative behaviour is important for yourself. Things that you do do not need justification, they effortlessly become who you are. Whether you did it one time or a million times, as long as you did it, you become capable of it again and again. You are what you do, what you do is the canvas on which you paint who you are as a person. That the things you do do not just reflect on your capability. It's no longer kinetic energy if it has been applied. And you need to remember, this is important: This does not matter to anyone else, because I know what you are thinking, if people label you a bad person that’s on them, and I agree. But it matters to yourself. Speaking from within your self-consciousness, the simple understanding of who you are and the things you are capable of. And yes, I do understand how desperate times call for desperate measures and it's been desperate times a whole lot lately, but do circumstances build character or does a man, that's up to you.

Now, do not get me wrong, I am not aware of the absolute punishment that there exists for being a bad man, a villain and therefore do not threaten you with penance, I simply ask that you be aware of who you are and the risk. Being a bad man means that you are well capable of being bad to even the ones you love, no matter how much justification you find, no matter how hard you try to hide it. Villainy is like a giggle at a funeral, if you have it, it’ll slip out. You can only hold out on who you are as a person for so long, you can only protect the people you love from yourself for so long. But here's a kicker, the future exists. And thus the possibility of you finding true love, the possibility of you finding light at the end of that tunnel, the possibility of all of your dreams coming true and therefore you deciding to sully your character now means that you are setting that future up for failure, that you would risk hurting the future by creating a version of you now that would do that. For everything that you do, be careful of what it means you could do, for your own sake, for the sake of those close to you, for the sake of those that will be close to you in the not yet.