Posted on January 4, 2022

"I invoked my Tenth Commandment: ‘Do what ought to be done’."

—Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

In December 2016, I learned a phrase that resonated incredibly with me and my way of acting. I was spending some time volunteering in Curitiba, Brazil, when I heard the saying “tudo vai dar certo”, which translates to “everything will turn out right”.

During my schooling years I had come to realize that if I took—what it seemed to be— the right decisions, eventually the results would be favorable. This allowed my young self to grow with little preoccupation on the outcome, while focusing only on the day-to-day decisions. That is why, after some years, I was so stargazed by a simple saying. It summarized perfectly my way of approaching most situations, or so I thought.

Now, after reading this new phrase some days ago, I found that that old-ish saying I adored was lacking its complement, some sort of prefix, to summarize perfectly the actual thought process that I was making: “do what ought to be done”.

It’s funny how language works. Being a not native English speaker, sometimes I realize small things that surely are trivial to many: the auxiliary verb to ought is not really part of my vocabulary. Of course I know of its existence, and I recognize it when reading it, but it is not one that I make use of when expressing myself. My defaults would have been have, but that implies some sort of “breakable obligation”—you have to do the dishes, but the world will keep on spinning if you don’t—; or should, but it addresses a suggestion. However, I feel that the word ought implies a sense of moral responsibility, which personally I’m quite fond of. It helps eliminate that very common question at the back of my head: “do I really have to?”; instead, it provides a sense of reassurance that, since it’s your responsibility to act that way—with myself or with others—, there is no other option than to do it. Then, once I do what ought to be done, I know that tudo vai dar certo at the end.