How do you qualify a person as a good person? Do you analise their actions or their intentions? Do you quantify the amount of good or do you qualify it?
How do you even know what is actually truly good? Is it by doing actions that cause others to become happier? Is it by being selfless? Is the size and the publicity of the act taken into account?
I may be going on a Chidi Anagonye tangent here, but I always desperately wanted to be a good person while not even knowing what made a person good. I always tried my best to be the best possible person, and I never thought about how that perfection could be impossible to achieve.
I always fought with the idea of what a good person was and what I could do to be that person, but over the time I noticed more and more variables that could be taken into account that only made the journey harder and pushed me further from my ideal. Still to this day, I constantly worry if my actions are actually good or if I am just selfish, and I still don’t know the answer to many of these acts I constantly do.
.
If I find a homeless starving person asking for food and I give them an extra snack from my backpack that wouldn’t be missed, is that a truly good act? It didn’t change anything in my life, it wasn’t a sacrifice, it was just something extra I had no need for. It also won’t change their whole life, it’ll only fill their belly for a short amount of time; it won’t stop their hunger forever and it definitely won’t take them from the street and into a warm home. Also, why did I do it? Did I do it only to show them that I care? Did I do it because I get gratification from seeing their smile? Did I do it because it would get me closer to my ideal of what a good person is? Do those things make this act selfish or selfless?
If I help a friend in need, dedicating time and effort to help them, is that a truly good act? It did take time and effort from my part, but I also got more rewards from doing the act, such as a person liking me more and the possibility of them helping me in return. Do the rewards cancel out the time and effort? Does the fact that this person is close to me negates the “sacrifice” I made? Does the fact that I now have a higher reputation spoils the selflessness? What was my intention behind helping them? Getting them to like me more or helping a person in need? Having the unspoken promise of help in return or just because I was available when no one else was?
Or maybe none of this is relevant and the act was just that: an act. Neither good nor bad. Just an act.
.
Other questions I have are about my goal as being a good person: Why is reaching that ideal so important to me? And why do I keep undermining my path to my goal?
Maybe I’ve seen how cruel the world can be, and I want to make the little good changes that make the world a better place. Maybe I want to be seen as an example and ideal for others to admire and follow. Maybe I have suffered so much that I can’t see another person suffering and just stand by. Maybe I just want to feel like a savior. Maybe I actually care, or maybe I just want to make it look like I care.
What exactly changes when I undermine myself so much? Maybe I feel like a harder to reach goal will make me stronger and better when I do reach it. Maybe I feel like I’ll get more satisfaction when I do reach that goal. Maybe I am scared of the possibility of reaching my goal and then having nothing else to strive for. Maybe I am indeed just chasing an unreachable goal. Or, dare I say it, maybe I already reached the previous goals and only moved my main goal further along?
.
I still have many questions that I still find unanswered inside of me, but the main one still resonates within every ounce of my being: am I actually a good person or am I just a good pretender?
