Is It True, Kind, Useful?

​I never knew of anybody who didn't at some time or other in their lives, need a helping hand, a guiding word, a piece of useful advice.

Did you?

This realisation got me thinking about the word 'useful'.

I read in a post somewhere recently about how a sage, I think it was Socrates, on being told what he suspected might be idle gossip, asked three questions.
Is it true?
Is it good or kind?
Is it useful or necessary?

If it didn't fulfill at least one, and preferably all three of these criteria, he didn't want to hear it.

They seem to be good measurements of merit, don't they?

So, perhaps we can take a direction from that.

Maybe we find how we can make our conversations, correspondence and general communications, true, kind and useful.

Now there's a Mindful Exercise.

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