The Ethical Life of Mother Teresa

Ethics is defined by the dictionary as moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity, it is the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles. In this subject of ethics, people get to learn that this ties with the way we are able to think and relate better to anything. For example, people need to share and make friendships with very well round minded people, like the type of people they aspire to be. People also need to think more of the little things that surround them and they need to learn that small accomplishments tend and will eventually lead to big ones when you make the right decisions and help everyone and anything that comes into your life.

To live ethically is to live a life that is very considerate towards the truth and the meaning of everything and everyone that surrounds us. Ethics also help us understand what is right from wrong and to have an understanding of how to react on certain occasions, without ethics no one would be able to form norms as they grow up or form their life and that is something that no one should grow up without.

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A perfect example of someone who lived a life using ethics and sharing to everyone about ethics was Mother Teresa, she taught everyone she could how valuable and important ethics was, she worked very closely with the poor and those in need to spread her message and try to get them a better life, and she tried to help everyone as much as possible to see the world and everything surrounding it in a more positive way.

In order to live an ethical life, we must first know that ethics has nothing to do with: feelings; with what is right from wrong; with religious beliefs; and also with what the society accepts. Anyone can and should have ethics, it doesn't matter if you follow a religion or not. Ethics mainly refers to our rights and our standards, it is what we believe is right and should be right, to have ethics is also to use all your virtues such as: honesty, compassion, and loyalty, just like Mother Teresa thought everyone she could to live them out.

Mother Teresa, who was born in Albania the year 1910, started her religious life at the age of twelve when she joined a religious vocation and then when she became eighteen she officially decided to leave her house to commit to the sisters of Loreto. She took her vows as a nun on 1931 and since then in her life, Mother Teresa has talked very highly about ethics and about how everyone out there should live or at least try to live their lives in a way that produces the following: justice, love, never giving up, helping others, sharing, respecting equal rights, and lastly peace. Anyone who knows a little about Mother Teresa is capable of knowing that she loved to live her life full of ethics and she demonstrated this by all the works she did to help the poor and by especially threatening everyone equally and with a lot of respect. To Mother Teresa, she believed that the purpose of life was mainly to help others and the idea that even those small and random acts of kindness people tend to make can and will impact the other person's life and make a very big difference in the world someday perfectly fits in with the views of ethics. Even though we may not be able to help as many people as we would like with what we have to provide, we should still try to help those we can as much as possible, just like she would say, "the meaning of true love, to give until it hurts."

During her life Mother Teresa valued the poor and their ethics very highly. She believed that the only way someone could understand how the poor felt and what they needed in order to live a life of ethics and values was to live with them or to share with them in solidarity, not just to feel bad for them or feel pity for them, we are to become like them and share everything we have with them, as she quoted, "when a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed." We as Catholics need to understand that taking care of the poor are part of our ethics, poverty and inequality are not just economic problems, but they are also ethical problems that we must fix. When we see someone suffering in streets asking for money or just someone suffering in general, we are called to act and to help that person, it doesn't matter if we don't know them or if they look like they wouldn't valorate us, everyone should just believe that they are helping someone in need even though you don't know them, because in the end we are all equal, and that is what being ethical is. In a research made at the university of Berkeley a professor talked about how inequality was a very big test for us when it came to ethics. He said that when it came to inequality people tend to see life differently, not everyone values the same things and we must be okay with that, as catholics we need to have faith in the poor and help them live better lives just like Mother Teresa always tried her best to and accomplished it.

Mother Teresa has made many quotes that provide everyone with a clear example of what an ethical life should be like. For example, when she said, "love begins by taking care of the closest ones, the ones at home." and "you have never really lived until you have done something for someone who can never repay you." Both of this quotes show how sincere and how Mother Teresa lived a live of ethics, she always put people in front of her and did everything she could for them, because she knew what was right even if she didn't know the person, which was the case most of the time, she would still always help them and try to provide them with love and knowledge. Another example of how Mother Teresa showed her ethics on life was when by 1996, one year before she passed away there were 517 missions around the world that were in function do to all of her help and dedication towards life and all the people, as she would say, "I see God in every human", and that is exactly how we should see everyone around us. Just like she invited everyone to help in her missions and help spread the message of ethics we should follow her on that and accomplish to do that with everyone we meet.

In conclusion, Mother Teresa built an ethical set of beliefs during her life that let almost everyone she met to be able to see the world and everything around it in a better and more understanding way. People that followed the message she was able to share with us were able to gain more knowledge about ethics and were also able to get to share more with anyone because at the end we are all equal and we should all value and respect that. Ethics is a way in which everyone can see and understand things the way that they really are and not judge anyone or anything by it's faults. With all the examples and journeys that Mother Teresa provided us with we are now able to get a glimpse of how we should try to live our lives and hopefully one day everyone can accomplish to live a more ethical life.