Why am I ending the quest to be a good person?
What I'm surprised to find is that my quest to be a good person is very damaging in terms of having the ability to unconditionally love all my other fellow humans on this Earth and to not feel like I'm separate.
I feel like a lot of us are on the same quest as I've been to be a good person. We're on this journey to prove that we're a good person to the world as I explain in this post and YouTube video!
Thank you very much to @gmichelbkk for converting the transcription of the YouTube video from GoTranscript into this beautiful post for Steemit, which is much faster to read than the video and has beautiful illustrations!
Ending the Quest to Be a Good Person!
We're on a journey towards being a good person by trying to work and make money because the idea is that if you’ve got enough money, if you are not broke, then you're a good person.
Or we're out there trying to get or keep a relationship, to prove that we're a good person, because we have a boyfriend, girlfriend, fiancée, husband, wife, partner, et cetera.
Or we're on a quest to be a good parent, where we then can look at our children and say, "Well, I did a good job parenting that child."
The problem is, on the quest to be good, it's necessary to create bad.
I've been praying in the morning for hundreds of days in a row to be a good husband and father. Well, what does that mean then?
Doesn't that mean if I'm praying to be a good husband that I'm also praying not to be a bad husband?
And by praying to be a good husband, aren't I judging the bad husbands out there?
"Well, this husband's bad, because he's not faithful to his wife."
"This husband's bad because he works too much."
"This husband's bad because he's ugly."
"This husband’s bad because he doesn't work."
"This husband's bad because he hates his job and complains about it all the time."
Aren't I making some perfect vision of good, and then looking around, even if this is subconscious and saying, "Well, these people are bad?"
I'm setting up this knowledge of good and evil, and I'm essentially aiming at one part of it, while trying to deny or avoid the other part of it.
What happens then when I get a thought in my head that another woman's attractive?
Am I a bad husband then, because I’ve thought, “Wow, that woman's quite attractive?”
Am I a bad husband then because I have thoughts that aren't faithful?
See, the problem with creating good and bad is that it creates the necessity for me to exclude certain thoughts. It creates a necessity for me to judge other people and to show that I'm good.
What if I just pray to be a husband?
What if I pray to be of service as a husband, to just be a useful husband, to be a husband that I'm happy with?
What I've been reading is the Bible and I'm in Genesis. It seems that men and wife were very happy until the knowledge of good and evil came about, and to me that's the pain of separation.
What I've been mostly doing is judging how I was before as bad, and judging how I am now as good. You might not think that's a big problem, but what I've been doing a lot is talking about how bad I was in the past, with the implication that I'm praying to be a good husband today, because I was either not as good or a bad husband in the past.
Wouldn't it be just easier to just live my life and accept what comes without the pressure, essentially?
"You’ve got to be a good husband."
"You have to be a good father."
"You have to be a good friend."
"You have to be a good worker online."
What do I do then when I'm not?
What happens when I have a grievance against my wife, that I'm upset with her?
Am I a bad husband then because I disagree with my wife?
Where does it end?
The quest to be a good person can be incredibly damaging to the rest of the world. What happens when you're just trying to go to work and be a good person?
Do you assume that by going to work and doing your job you're being a good person?
But what if the work you're doing is hurting a lot of other people, even if it's indirectly by signing papers or by allowing money for something?
What happens when I assume that I'm a good person just because I go to AA meetings?
Or I assume I'm being a good husband just because I'm faithful to my wife?
Or I assume I'm being a good father just because I don't smack my daughter?
Or I assume that I'm being good to my dogs just because I feed them?
How much room am I making to do bad when I have a narrow definition of good like that?
What I tend to do is make this ridiculous definition of good, and then I can never live up to it. Now, I'm a good husband if I'm faithful to my wife, if I don't argue and disagree with her, if I'm there to help her all of the time and about 5,000 other conditions are required from me to be a good husband.
Therefore it's very easy on my quest to be a good husband to fail often over the tiniest little detail. Maybe I argued a little bit with my wife, and now I'm not a good husband anymore. A good husband doesn't argue with his wife. You see how the rules could easily differ. Your idea of a good husband might be one that stands up to his wife, who doesn't just allow his wife to do whatever she wants.
What if everyone's idea of what's good is different?
What we have then are people who are trying to do a good job coming to conflict with each other. This is how we have wars, one good soldier is trying to shoot another good soldier. They're both trying to be a good soldier, which is why they're trying to kill each others. If they were bad soldiers, they might both put down their guns and walk home, and be with their families. Sometimes it's better to not be good at things. Sometimes bad is good.
You see that in the soldier example it's so clear. If all the soldiers were bad soldiers and they just put down their guns and went home, you might say, "Well, that's a terrible and useless soldier, no good to his country.” If everyone's soldier is like that, no one could fight. If there weren't good soldiers, then there wouldn't be good wars or bad wars. There wouldn’t be any wars at all if there weren't good soldiers to fight them.
There wouldn't be atomic bombs if there weren't good physicist, hoping to do a good thing for their country, going to work, and then all of the sudden, now we have all these nuclear bombs who were made by good physicists, or you might say that they were bad.
You see, the problem is that labels are totally arbitrary. What one person says is good, another person might say is bad. I'm sure there are men who would look at me and say, "He's a terrible husband. Look, he's weak, he's wimpy."
Someone might say that I'm a terrible husband. Others might say, "Wow, he's practically a saint."
Why would I try and aim being something that's so subjective?
Something that leads me to either do very little and just say, "Well, as long as I meet this one condition. If I don't hit my wife, then I'm a good husband. Whatever else I do, I'm a good husband."
When I go on this quest to be a good person, it leads to these extremes where I either have a minimal standard of good, that then I can be essentially like I want and still be a good person.
Or it leads to the other extreme of where I have to just keep pilling more and more conditions on to be good.
All of a sudden, there are 5,000 different things I have to do to be a good husband. Not one person in the world would probably agree with all those 5,000 things as qualifying as a good husband or a good father, or a good friend, or a good family member, or a good business owner, or a good podcaster, or YouTuber.
I made a video yesterday that was kind of a rant and what I’d basically been doing is just excluding most of those things. It's not that I didn't do that in my head. It's not that I didn't experience that. I was just excluding that from my podcast because even in my podcast, I was trying to be a good person.
"Let me show you, let me prove to you what a good person I am."
A lot of my work online has been the quest to prove I'm a good person and I'm grateful to see I'm not.
I'm not even a person necessarily, you might say a soul. I'm not even a body, I'm just here. I'm here to love, that's my one united purpose. I'm here to love unconditionally, to be of service, to be useful and sometimes, that might be useful by me being a bit more honest.
"Look, I'm not a good person in every single aspect of my life. I have sexual thoughts that would qualify as bad."
My idea of a good person is that a good person doesn't have sexual thoughts like that, and that's the whole problem with the good, it requires then denying or rejecting, or lying about the various things we go through, and that's how the world seems to be so suffocating.
I heard a story about a girl going to a sonogram with her mother in law, and feeling really nervous and upset about it, but feeling like she had to be a good daughter in law, put on a strong face, that she couldn't just be upset in front of her mother in law.
Why?
If you're nervous and upset, why not just show that?
The problem is, we get into this programming, “I have to be a good wife or a good husband, or a good employee, and a good employee doesn't break down and cry at work.”
Well, what if you need to break down and cry at work?
I have had this idea in my life about a good man, and ultimately, all of the things we have a problem with come down to a simple functionality of how men and women are programmed to be, “You be a good boy like this and this is how you be a good girl,” and what we have a problem with occurs all over the place.
In other words, trying to just fix one little aspect of it doesn't make any difference, especially when it's from outside. What you notice is that whatever you try to fix simply morphs into a different problem.
The pain of separation
As I've noticed, the more I've tried to be a good person, that it keep cropping up these things that don't qualify as a good person. Suddenly, I'm saying nasty things, even if it's just in my head. I'm judging and condemning other people who must not be good.
"They're not as good as I am."
That is where the pain of separation comes in, and ultimately, that's the one wound, that's the victim that we're all a victim of.
The one thing, if you strip off all the dressings about how we're victims, it all comes down to the pain of separation, that it probably goes all the way back to even being raised as an infant, that pain of separation that you're not part of the tribe, you're not part of the community.
"We're going to leave you as a screaming baby in this crib all by yourself until you fall asleep, to show you that we are dominant over you."
"We're going to deal you the blow of separation. We're going to show you that you're alone in this world and no one cares about you."
That is our initial experience once we are born and often years on into infancy. Even when our parents were sure they were being good parents. They read parenting books that said, "You got to let your child cry it out."
Or, "You have to show your child who's the boss."
They were trying to be good parents and they dealt us this horrible blow of separation.
This is the problem with good.
When you're so sure you're good, why investigate any of the bad?
Why look at any of the bad?
When I'm so sure I'm a good husband, I just need to deny or fight against anything that doesn't qualify as good, or ignore it, or lie about it. Yes, I notice other women and why does a good husband notice other women being attractive?
You might think, "Well, that's a minor detail."
The problem is that the quest to be good is comprehensive. The more good you get, the more good you have to keep being or the more you have to start shoving things under the rug.
"Let's just pretend I don't ever notice any other women are attractive. We'll just shove that under the rug, because that doesn't fit with my idea of a good husband. Or does it?"
"A good husband would be so attracted to his wife that that same programming would allow him to also, essentially, be able to recognize the same in others."
Does a good husband also notice when men are attractive?
I notice when there's an attractive man, "Wow, that is a good looking man." Is that part of being a good husband or would a good husband be rigidly straight?
A good husband wouldn't notice if another man's attractive.
A good husband might not have a thought about being with another man.
You see, this whole business of being good makes life suffocating. It puts this pressure on us from outside. What I've noticed is that the outside world puts almost no pressure on me. The outside world actually makes my life pretty easy. The outside world really asks very little of most people.
It's the inside pressures, this idea that I have to be a good person, that puts a gigantic stress on me. I feel that stress in my body. I've been experiencing that as I wake up in the morning, and I have this huge laundry list of things that I need to do to prove I'm a good person.
Let me prove to you that I'm good!
I have to do my podcast to prove I'm a good person.
I have to change my daughter's diaper in the morning and hang out with her to prove I'm a good husband and father.
I need to feed my dogs to prove that I'm a good dog owner.
I need to then start filming video classes or making some music to prove that I'm a good business owner, to prove that I'm a good man who knows how to work.
And then I've got to prove that I'm a good husband again by going through and syncing up what I do with my nap time.
I have to prove that I'm a good man again by getting to work, that I'm a good worker by doing all this work online.
I have to prove I'm healthy then by eating a certain way.
I have to prove that I am willing to have discipline by going over and make my smoothie.
I have to prove that I'm a good alcoholic by going to my AA meeting.
I have to prove that I'm a good son in law by going to hang out with my family.
I have to prove that I'm a good brother, son, and friend by calling my brother, mother and friends up.
You see, it's easy to get anxious, “Well, what if I can't prove to everyone how good I am today? What if I don't do a good job at something?”
Shame trigger
Like today, I had what I call a "shame trigger." I forgot to put the recycling out, because in St. Petersburg, Florida, the recycling where I live comes on Mondays and every two weeks, and if you don't put your recycling out by 5:00 in the morning, maybe at 6:00 or 7:00, it's too late. I put it out there at 8:30 and it already came.
If you don't go put it out there, then you miss it and you've got to wait two weeks for the recycling again. Often, my huge recycling can gets filled up in two weeks, so now I'm looking at the prospect as it is half full, what is going to happen to it in two weeks?
Now, all of a sudden, I'm not a good person anymore because I missed the damn recycling.
Then guess what?
I go let the dogs back in because they are crazy and want to eat in the morning, my daughter's got a mini-muffin in her hand and now I'm not a good dog owner or husband, or father anymore because I was in a hurry and I didn't think to even check.
I just came back in and now I end up picking one of the dogs up, and the dog squeals, and I put him outside. Now, all of a sudden, it's damn nine o'clock in the morning, I just got up and I don't feel like I'm a good person anymore.
Why?
Because I missed putting the recycling out and because I picked one of the dogs up and it squealed a little bit.
Now I'm not a good person anymore because of essentially two minor transgressions. Two little tiny ways that theoretically I could improve.
Guess what?
When you try to be a good person so hard, you get this gigantic backlash when you slip. What happens when you've now switched into "I'm-a-bad-person" mode?
I'm bad!
Now all the good stuff tends to go out the window.
"Well, if I'm going to be a bad husband and father, friend and family member, and community member, because I didn't put my recycling out on time, I'm also a bad dog owner because I caused my dog some minor discomfort in picking him up and taking him outside when he was going crazy."
"Now, because I'm a bad person, well, F it. I'm just going to just be bad all the way. Let me just drop all these ridiculous good expectations and just go crazy."
"It's time to lose your mind and let the crazy out."
That's one of my favorite lines form a Kesha song.
So what happens when we fail at our quest to be good?
What happens then to all of these ideas of good?
"Well, F it, I'm just going to go do whatever I want. I'll lay whatever addiction or sick behavior, I'll just go ahead and do it. I'll lay in bed all day, I'll take some more pills, I'll go see a therapist. I'll get drunk, I'll scream at my husband or wife, or children, or kick the dog, or whatever it is. I'll drive crazy and flick a person off on the road."
What happens when we fail to meet our ideal of good?
The problem doesn't seem to be that we're not good people for a lot of us, it's that we set such high expectations. I have 5,000 things that I have to do to be a good person, and as soon as I fail a couple of them, the temptation comes to just be a bad person. One of the worst ways you could be a bad person, is just to kill yourself. The problem is that as soon as I stop being a good person, every other thing is on the table.
Why?
Because a bad person has a lot of options available.
Get drunk?
Sure, a bad person can do that. It can be all the things that I think of, all the opposites of good, essentially. They are all on the table then.
"Well, I'm a bad person now, let's just let it go, let it go and go to town."
I'm going to do everything that I've been squeezing myself to not do. I'm going to let it all out. “Give me that package of Oreos. I'm going to knock the whole box out. Let's have a steak, several steaks. Let's eat until I need to throw up, but I can't. Let's get call someone up on the phone and cuss them out. Let's make some nasty posts online and rant and rage at how sick the world is.”
What happens when we fail to meet these ridiculously high standards of good we set?
What happens when we make the switch and all of a sudden I'm a bad person?
Then, we often get sucked into situations which gives us more and guide us towards working even harder to be a good person, because deep down we're certain we're a bad person.
Why do I work so hard to be a good person?
I work so hard to be a good person because on some deep level, I'm feeling separate. I'm feeling like I'm not included in the whole tribe of humanity. I have to get up and do so many different things to just try and dance. Just like you want me to all day, to get a little bit of applause or a smile to prove that I'm a good person and therefore, I fit in and I'm not separate, and I'm not all alone, and this isn't hell, but heaven.
Wow, that was a mouthful.
I'm grateful today to share this with you because I'm ending my quest to be a good person. I'm aware of how damaging my quest to be good person is, of how I condition my quest to be a good person on this idea that there's a bad person.
It's not that I don't want to be a good person, I would like to remain a faithful husband, a kind and loving father, a good dog owner. I would like to have these positive behaviors. I would like to be of loving service to the world, but it's not fair that I condition my happiness on doing all these things, that I condition being a good person rather I prove it every single day.
What if I just have faith and trust that if I act naturally, if I just love the people around me and the opportunities I have around me that I will naturally be a good person then. I might be a better person that way than if I settle these ideas up in my head about what is good.
"A good person does this and a bad person does that."
What if I stop acting like I was such a bad person before?
Maybe it will be easier for me to not judge people who are acting now like I acted before: using lots of nasty language and watching porn all the time, and not going to work, hating their jobs, complaining about the world, and judging others.
What if I stop telling the story of how I'm such a good person now and how I was such a bad person before?
Maybe, I'll get a little bit of relief on feeling like if I fail at being a good person, I'll suddenly just relapse into this bad person, whatever form it takes.
Final words
Thank you very much for experiencing this with me today because I hope this is useful and of service to you. You don't have to be a good person to be loved, you're lovable just how you are.
I'm lovable just how I am whether I get the recycling out on time or not, whether I lay in bed all day and do nothing or whether I get up and contribute to the world, because when I'm loved, I naturally want to contribute to the world. I don't have the tendency to want to lay in bed unless I need to.
My exercise for today is to notice whether I'm on the quest to be a good person or whether I'm just seeking to be of loving service.
Thank you very much for reading this today.
I appreciate you being here and I hope you have a wonderful day.
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Love,
Jerry Banfield