If you are like me and one of the constant things you’ve heard people say is that they like the goodness about you, your mannerism (fun fact, I once won a prize for best behaved student in primary school🤣), and your intellectualism, you may spend a few years perfecting duplicity.
The struggle to people please and to live life as you please.
The ironic part is the expectations are higher on you to be above human. No one cares anymore that as a human you are also bound to make mistakes, to be subject to “monumental” streak of curiosity that is often tagged rebellion, that you also have a need to explore the questions you have in the not so “conventional good girl methods.” That you may be good but not all your desires are good.
I am not making a case for the mayhem that is patriarchy or to debate the necessity of rebellion or otherwise. All I came here to say is as a “good girl” don’t die under the weight of expectations that do not serve you. Practice this selfishness for the sake of validating yourself as no one will or they will at the price of your docility, subservience, and forgery.
It is one thing to practice goodness but it is another to accept that no one is truly “good” at least not in the abstract sense of what goodness means to each person. The question of morality is often subjective, but the fact that a person is not “good” does not necessarily mandate that they are bad. They are other adjectives that qualifies people that do not necessarily describe their entirety. I think it is too binary to classify people as either good or bad. Of course, a case could be made for binary classification too.
But, “bad people” sometimes, do good things and “good people” could often act badly but the constant in this equation is that they are still people! humans, subject to flaws, errors, and bad judgements.
No, don’t twist this narrative, this is not an excuse to be indolent about being better nor an occasion to brandish humanity as a functional integrity to perpetrate wickedness or mayhem, rather, a conscious call to ease up on people a little.
The other angle to this illusive subject of goodness is that it propels a need to be calculating, to present a front, to barter an exchange for acceptance which limits the excellency of memories that could be born of imperfection.
You ask what I mean by the last statement?
It is simply that now I know for me to be accepted by you, I have to tell my stories in a way that appease your bias, I have to dress in a way that makes you inclined to see the goodness me, I have to act good while missing out on all the ways I am already good without the superficiality.
In relationships it is also limiting because loving a person based on goodness presupposes that there is no room for error. Of course, I understand the standard here is reasonable goodness, no one voluntarily wants to love a murderer for example, but the question here really is whether or not love ought to be transactional. If so, under what circumstances is it acceptable?
As a parent, would you prefer to know your child as they are or in the image that you think they should be? Yes, a person has a choice not to hide themselves from you and just be authentic but how can the balance come from a relationship that already started high ended?
You were always the judge of their worthiness, so if they spent years trying to please you but never attain, the only other way to be with you is to cut off or be a shadow of themselves. This is what I meant by limiting the excellency of memories. More than that, it is undermining our capacity for love.
Love is metamorphosis yet unchanging…
I have adopted this phenomenon as “like ability culture” which I once heard from a friend. This culture is such that it contorts people to become harbinger of pretense for a flawed acceptance from even imperfect people. It is quite laughable actually. The very people who set the standards are in themselves incapacitated from attaining their perfection through the cruise hold of their flaws.
Ok, I digressed a lot, I hope you didn’t notice…
The point is you don’t always have to trade something for all the love you receive, you don’t have to be perfect to be worthy and if you are a good girl who has been tripping one too many times, you can still dream of a happy ending. Don’t gaslight yourself out of worthiness because you didn’t tick all the goodness boxes.
In the end only God is good, as humans we only try at goodness.
PS: To my male readers I hope you get the context of this message, you are allowed to ease up on yourself too. Men deserve love too even when they are not perfect. I hope you learn to appreciate all the ways you are already worthy even as you attain the visions you set for being your ideal self.
Xoxo,
Dcconoissuer
Connoisseur of Memories 