December 2023
Finding light in the dark times
This is a few days late due to family illness, which hit right after Thanksgiving at the official start of the holiday season. In addition to the plodding frustration of not feeling well, this time of year often gets me mulling the balance between gratitude and greed and the adjacency of messaging like “10 Reasons to be Thankful” alongside “Top 20 gifts your ungrateful tween won’t want to return.”
While ill, we’ve been binging “The Good Place.” If you haven’t seen it, it is a fun, technicolor foray into basic ethics, lived out by cheery, diverse humans (including the “forking” awesome Kristen Bell) who have died and gone to The Good Place. Despite being in paradise, they continue to act out their human failings under the scrutiny of Ted Danson, who plays the (spoiler!) demon-in-charge imbued with all the impotent empathy of a professional bartender. The show is a light comedy filled with quick humor and situations that will make you choke on your drink – but don’t be fooled. It has a slow-burn effect that digs deeply into the greater questions humans ask: Why are we here? Is there an afterlife? And does it really matter if you are good or bad?
The ultimate question!
Watching this show led to a profound question from my teen, directed at me: Can people truly be good, or are people just selfishly motivated to do good deeds?
The question snapped me back to a moment during my sophomore year of high school. I was (again) the new kid. We’d moved over the summer between places with different cultures, accents, and rules regarding friendliness toward newcomers. It was mid-year, but most of the kids still wouldn’t talk to me (for reasons of pure meanness I learned during college – but that’s another story). Being ostracized reinforced my solitary tendencies, so I just kept my head down and tried not to call attention to myself. That is probably why this memory remains so vivid.
Mr. Martin's class was one of those seminars where you read and discuss Big Things. The teacher – Mr. Martin – had a Robin Williams type charisma. He talked to us like he was our guide on an exciting quest through LIFE. The school was one of those bizarre podular style buildings popular in the 80s, and to reach this particular classroom we had to exit outdoors and re-enter through an outside door, so it felt like we’d found a portal to an alternate adult universe. And yet, attending that class felt like playing a PlayStation 5 game with an Atari joystick. We were adolescents with the tools of overgrown children, engaging in the great questions of life. Still, Mr. Martin made us feel we were up to the task and that somehow, we would prevail.
In a flash, the smell of the stale carpet and the muted slams of doors in adjacent rooms fill my mind. The smooth white desk cools my hands under my chin, as Mr. Martin poses the same question to the class that my teen had posed to me: What is the nature of man? Is man inherently good or evil, selfish or kind?
There was probably reading that was done to prepare us. I’d probably read it. I don’t remember the details, but I do remember as the discussion progressed, I found my voice so forcefully that the discussion was reduced to a debate between one other young woman and me, taking opposite sides and heatedly batting the logic ball back and forth while the rest of the class sat watching silently. Her position was that man is inherently selfish, and anything that appears to be a good deed is just a selfish deed carefully chosen to improve one’s own self-image or ego by appearing good. My position was less clear but revolved around man doing both good things and bad things, and the nature of man being somewhat self-determined.
She seemed articulate and solid in her position, logical and sure. I was equally sure she was wrong but struggled to find reasons. “What if someone buys flowers for someone in the hospital?” I remember having asked. “That's a kind deed.” She argued back, “Buying flowers isn’t something people do to make the sick person feel better. They only buy flowers so THEY can feel good about doing something that appears kind. It is a selfish act.” I was appalled at this elision of any genuinely kind act from her version of reality. It still makes me sad to think that she was so cynical at 16, but at the time I was left mulling my own inventory of “good deeds” to see if I was truly kind or selfish – my case study of one, available for deeper probing.
Four decades later...
I have better real-world examples, now.
Melinda Gates has most likely gained a good feeling inside herself and definitely improved her image through her charitable donations, but she could have done so more publicly (to gain broader attention), or she could have done things that were less intentional, less “good” with her money. Her choices are clearly not fueled by selfishness or need for external validation alone, so there must be some good behind her “good deeds.” Taylor Swift is famously kind, despite her immense fame – countless videos exist of her doing kind things - taking care of fans, expressing kindness to unkind middle school acquaintances, or showing up in places where she knows her fame will shine a beneficial light. The sheer volume of examples of Taylor’s kindness reveals it to be more inherent than performative.
But the best example of a pure kind of goodness is one close to home – to my home, and probably to yours, too.
It is my local Buy Nothing group.
The "Buy Nothing" Movement
Buy Nothing is a movement to find what we need without purchasing new from stores. The group I belong to focuses on wishes and gifts and is just a few miles wide, so that gifts can be quickly delivered or picked up from porches. A person offers a gift – always free! – and others express interest. The giver chooses the recipient and arranges pickup. Or a person expresses a wish, and others offer what they have. The group is funny and kind, and very generous. Last week a woman wished for a cat cave for her five cats, who were fighting over the one she’d gotten a week prior, and two people immediately offered her theirs. Someone wished for a flute for their elementary school aged daughter, and someone else dusted one off from storage and gave it to her. People exchange clothes, shoes, antique furniture, plants, craft items, singles of things only purchasable in multiples…anything you can imagine. Items go from unused to loved, storage to use, all within the small radius of two elementary schools. Some items are regifted within the group, year to year, person to person.
I gift. I receive. And I feel joy at giving things to people and receiving nothing in return. And I feel joy at receiving things I truly need from others. There is pure goodness in this group.
And this brings us back to the dichotomy of November and December – the month of gratitude followed by the month of conspicuous consumption. The months of excessive eating and excessive gifting.
And the profound question asked by my teacher, my teen, and almost every children’s story.
What motivates you?
Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?
And in the end, when the chips are down, which side will you be on?
The light inside you
Here is what I told my teen:
People are complicated. The same act can be either kind or selfish, depending on the intention and motivation of the giver. One person may give flowers to someone who is in the hospital with the intention of bringing joy. Another may give flowers as a token gesture, meant only to highlight the giver’s acknowledgement of the situation. They might even send the flowers with bitterness or resentment. Those two situations may even be true of the same person, in two different situations. Because the only person who knows the true intent behind the act is the person doing the deed. People are capable of having both good and bad motives. Sometimes at the same time. And they can do good deeds with bad intentions, or bad deeds with noble intentions.
From Thanksgiving to New Year’s, the season is replete with chances to do things that look like the right thing, the good thing. People will post and share their activities prolifically, showing how well they celebrate the season.
But here’s the thing - performative deeds, even if they do good in the world, don’t necessarily make the doer a good person. The true nature of the deed lies in the intent of the person doing the deed – and that is a very private thing. So private that people don’t always acknowledge their own motivations.
The famous John Wesley quote advises us to “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.” [1]
Not to presume to improve upon 230 years of wisdom, but I would add to that, “for all the right reasons.”
So – however you spend the darkest time of the year, I wish you well and hope you may find joy in doing good, whatever that looks like for you, and feeling the warmth that comes from knowing you did it for all the right reasons.
Peace
Meg
P.S. Oh, and that other girl? In case you wondered, she grew up to be a very successful attorney.
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Love the post on being good! You are a great writer, Meg. And I relate to all of your points (including regarding teen relations). Especially admire the Buy Nothing club piece. Reminds me of the gift economy discussed in the recent book "Braiding Sweetgrass" if you've read it. A worthwhile shift to make in this world, one friend group at a time if necessary!