Do you think we all want to be good? And to do good? Is it something to do with being liked? Or loved? I’m really not sure.
I remember wanting to please my parents, especially my mother. They lived in different times, a time when it was normal to leave children alone in the house. And they gave me strict instructions on what to do and what not to do. I had to look after my younger brother. I recall one evening they went out and me and my brother were just finishing our tea. I did all the dishes afterwards and dried them and put them all away. Then I pulled all the pots and pans out of the cupboard and cleaned everything so it was sparkling and new. Was I being good? I certainly thought so.
Then you get into your teens and it is maybe harder to be completely good, not just because life is more complex but there’s the influence of your peers to contend with. I remember I tried smoking and lied to my parents about it; I stole a book from a shop once; I skipped school once – but only once.
Then I studied philosophy at university. I thought it might have something to do with being good. I was already kind and not just to people close to me. I swore but only a little, not liking the taste of those words in my mouth. I thought the best of people and thought they could not be intentionally bad, but saw their hard or hurtful actions as the result of some pain they were dealing with. I tried to understand people and to be compassionate towards their undisclosed pain. I don’t think I learned that from studying philosophy.
And as a teacher that was always useful, to hold all your pupils in equal regard and to see any misbehaviour as communication and nothing more malicious than that. Recently I read something online – it was a bit trite and a bit cute; it was how when we are old we are still the child inside – it was an encouragement to see old people with a specific sensitivity. I don’t know if I quite believe that, I don’t know; but I do think adults are not so very different from children. We hope they are smarter and more in tune with who they are and more inclined towards goodness, but that may not always be the case and where it isn’t then if we look a little closer we will, I think, find a reason for the way they are and in that understanding there might be kindness.
Is being kind something to do with goodness? Is wanting to do good enough? Is trying to be always good what being good is – and having always tried it no longer feels like trying but just is second nature? And what about when that goodness is tested and it breaks a little? Are we then no longer good?
I sometimes worry about the hurt others suffer in this world. Things said to them, about them; things done to them. That is why I am careful (try to be) in avoiding the infliction of such hurt. People are sometime fragile or near the edge and the smallest hurt can tip them over. And you never can tell what a hard word will do. At school thinking like this made you ‘soft’ but if it is part of who you are you just have to deal with that. Kind, thoughtful, sensitive, damaged – that is what I am and yet the impulse is still to be good.
And when I see that in another person I recognise the need and I am lit up and want to do a specially good deed for that person. Maybe that’s why I cleaned the pot cupboard, top to bottom – because my mother was unhappy that day. On her return, when she saw what I had done she called me good and she was smiling all the next day. Being good is, I think, about making the world better for other people and if we do that then we make the pain they have easier to bear. I think that is there in my writing if you look.
