So, here's a real life example; it just happened so it's fresh in my mind. I was at Subway (in case I've never told you, I don't have any affinity for Subway what-so-ever, it's just that in Yuma, there's not much of a choice; hopefully you'll know this because we'll be living somewhere that has a lot more choices for eating... not that you should be doing it that much what with your mom being as good a cook as she is), and there were three of us waiting in line to pay for our food. We all had our sammiches made, but someone's shift was ending, they were cashing out, and we were all waiting to be rung up. I was the third person in line.
I glanced over and noticed there was only one bag of Doritos left, and no Cheetos. Now, Cheetos aren't my favorite snack... neither are Doritos; they're probably 3rd and 2nd on my list respectively. My favorite "chip" type snack are Ruffles Cheddar and Sour Cream with a Mountain Dew to wash it down. The problem is, Cheetos has the most food in the bag (at least in the snack bags, I haven't checked the big bags), so I usually get that just to get more for my money. Anywhose, back to the point, one bag of Doritos left. Now, I could've walked over, grabbed the bag, and held on to it until it was time to ring me up. I don't think there's anything "wrong" with that. The closest argument anyone could make would something along the lines of, those other two guys were there first, they should get dibs on chip choice before me. But the fact is, anyone could walk in at any time, walk up, grab a bag of chips, and pay for it; if they're not buying a sammich, they don't have to wait in the sammich line, they just go up and pay for it. So had I grabbed the chips before either of the two guys paid and grabbed theirs, it would be questionable at worst, not "bad" at best.
But more importantly, it's definitely not "good". I believe there are at least three states for almost every situation; good, bad, and neutral. That's not to say there are varying shades of grey as you may have heard, that's just saying there's doing good (e.g. holding the door open for someone), doing neutral (e.g. walking through a door), and doing bad (e.g. shutting the door after you walk through, even when you know someone is behind you). Many times, doing neutral is actually not doing anything. Many times doing what I consider to be neutral, many people feel that's actually doing good, I'm assuming because they feel that if they're not doing bad, they must be doing good; I wholeheartedly disagree with that. If just walking through the door is not bad, then it must be good, and if it's good, then what's holding the door open... better? Now you're starting to talk about multiple shades of white which is... silly.
Sometimes there isn't an opportunity to do "good", there's just the choice between doing bad and doing not bad (which is different than "not doing bad"); sometimes doing good for one person is doing bad for someone else (e.g. letting someone skip you in line might be nice to the person you're allowing to skip, but it's rude to the people in line behind you). But, in this example that I'm giving here, I had the choice of getting the bag before they paid (depending on who you talk to, there's absolutely nothing "bad" about that), or just waiting until it was my turn to get the bag (which isn't "good" either because that's just the natural flow).
However, I was faced with a choice: serve myself at the possible expense of someone else (maybe neither one of them would take the Doritos), or let them have dibs on the Doritos if they wanted them (then I get stuck with chips I don't like). To me, there's absolutely no question about it, you follow the "rules" and let them have first choice since they were there first; going over and grabbing those chips is simply selfish or thoughtless... oh wait, I haven't talked about selfishness vs. thoughtlessness. I'll link to that once I get that written up.
The kicker is, from my perspective, I was willing to give away what I wanted so they could have what they wanted, pretty selfless if you ask me, but they'll never know it. All they know is, they paid for the meal, turned around, and grabbed the bag they wanted never knowing that's what I wanted. Now, I personally don't really care about that fact, but most people would; most people, when they do something sacrificial, want everyone to know about "Hey everybody, look at the good deed I do-ed."
So, I ALWAYS want you to be conscious about what others may want, and to ALWAYS put their wants over yours, a-l-w-a-y-s; always put their needs over yours; obviously put their needs over your wants, that would be just wrong not to; now, putting their wants over your needs, now we can talk about that (of course, all of this is dependent on knowing the difference between your wants and needs, and even harder to discern the wants vs. needs of someone else).
What would've been me doing "good"? In this situation, I don't think I could've, so I have to pose a different situation. Let's say I was the first person in line, with the other two behind me. It would've been perfectly acceptable for me to pay for my meal, walk over and grab whatever bag of chips was available to me; heck, some people might argue doing anything different would be silly. Doing good, being different, leading an exemplary life would've been to see the last bag of Doritos, realize these other two guys may have wanted it, turn to them and ask, "Hey, are either of you going to get Doritos," and if either said yes, give them the bag. That's true sacrifice... well, so far as realizing that all we're talking about here is a bag of chips, not you amputating your leg to save someone else's life. And the trick, of course, would be to find the joy in making sure someone else got what they wanted, and that joy should be far greater than anything you sacrificed.
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