Do No Harm

Written by Dr. Holly Ward, PhD

In a world that can be so painful, how do we avoid contributing to the pain?

If you’ve been tuned into the news for the last several months, it seems that harm is being done the world over: from reports of verbal and physical abuse in disputes close to home, to horrific atrocities committed in an unjust war on another continent. It is hard not to look at the state of the world today and think that it is becoming more acceptable to treat others as less than human. 

With the unending influx of Bad News, it can begin to feel hopeless to do anything to combat the metastasizing pain enveloping humanity, perpetrated by our fellows, perpetuated by hurt people hurting people.

How can we begin to create a world where doing no harm is not only valued, but prioritized?

How do we learn to care about the greater good in a healthy and sustainable way? We could debate how we arrived at the current state of affairs and place blame in a multitude of places, but in order to move forward, we must focus on the actions we can take, beginning with ourselves.

The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates understood the importance of ethics in medicine. He is who we have to thank for the Hippocratic Oath, a medical text that required physicians to swear to uphold specific ethical standards in their practice of medicine, chief among them the directive to “do no harm.” Doctors today still take the Hippocratic Oath, swearing to do only what they think will benefit their patients.

This principle of doing no harm can and should extend to our relationships with others in our daily lives. When we interact with family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers, we have an opportunity to show we respect and value their being. We face a million choices a day that can affect the people around us in large and small ways.

As Plato said, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

When we begin to prioritize doing no harm as a personal guiding principle, we begin to see these daily choices in a new light. We consider the unseen battles the people around us may be fighting. We ask ourselves, “Does this choice reflect care for others, or am I only thinking of myself?” 

Doing no harm applies not only to our communities, but to ourselves. While we are working to shift our perspectives to be more compassionate and expansive in consideration of others, we cannot forget to shine that compassion on ourselves as well. After all, you can’t pour from an empty cup. 

Tending to your own needs first might sound counter-intuitive when you are trying to care for others more, but when your own needs are not tended to, you are more likely to operate from a place of lack, of defensiveness, and of pain. Hurt people hurt people, and if you are doing harm to yourself by neglecting your own needs, you are creating a hurt person who is going to act from their basic instinct to survive, no matter what that means for the people around them.

You can’t consider others’ needs properly when your own are not met.

The approach for instituting the principle of Do No Harm in our own daily lives is threefold:

1. Take care of ourselves.
   Be your own wise adult: how would you care for yourself if you were your own child? You’d probably make sure you were eating nourishing foods at regular intervals, resting when you’re tired, and engaging in stimulating activities that help your mind and body grow strong. Modern daily life demands much of us and it can feel impossible, even selfish and discouraged, to take time for yourself. Taking care of yourself can start small: a ten-minute walk, five minutes of quiet solitude or meditation, going to bed 30 minutes earlier, eating one extra green vegetable. Fill your cup first, and then you will be able to pour compassion out for the people around you with a sense of abundance and gratitude. Don’t forget to refill before you’re empty again!

2. Enrich the lives of the people around us.
   We can’t possibly know the countless positive, negative, and neutral experiences that make up the stories of the people around us; we can only know that they are unique, and that we have an opportunity with every interaction to add to the good. A kind word, a thoughtful gesture, or merely time spent with someone can make a constructive difference in that person’s life story. 

3. Realize we are part of the greater good.
   We are not the center of the world-- we are a part of an intricate, interconnected, globe-spanning web of humanity. When we pause to consider the myriad offshoots that originate from our point in that web, we begin to see how our individual actions can have a rippling effect, for better or for worse, through this immense network. When we act with consciousness of that effect and with the intention to do no harm, we have the power to affect change in our own little corner of the web, which when multiplied by the efforts of others in that network, can have a profound, exponentially expanding impact on the world at large.

When we take care of ourselves, consider others, and incorporate the greater good in our consciousness, not only do we do no harm, we increase our capacity to do good.

Not only do we avoid adding pain, we can add joy to the global equation.

We can begin to live the words most often attributed to the 18th-century English cleric, theologian, and evangelist, John Wesley:

“Do all the good you can,
By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can,
In all the places you can,
At all the times you can,
To all the people you can,
As long as ever you can.”