Good Deeds

Good deeds don’t make you good

Protecting the planet doesn’t make you good

Giving to charity doesn’t make you good

Not eating animals doesn’t make you good

Protecting the oppressed doesn’t make you good

Goodness is not some game

Goodness is not scoring points

Obviously I’d rather you not destroy the planet and I’d rather you help the starving children rather than help your yacht

But it doesn’t yet make you good

It’s all very nice if the whole world can see how good you are

It’s actually even nicer if you can convince yourself how good you are

Your desire to be good is not much different to your desire to be significant. In either case you attempt to find some self worth — self worth that will allay the existential terror of reconciling with your own death — which means accounting to nothing, which means utter insignificance

You feel less insignificant with how you care about poor animals and oppressed minorities

And yet goodness is simple

Whether you like to admit it or not — you are here for a brief moment and your life is exactly what it is — not much more and not less

You will go through that life and every day you will make choices

You will make choices with how you treat your neighbour and how you treat your coworker

You will make choices with what you contribute

You will make choices with how you solve everyday problems

You will make choices with how to live well

This ridiculous pomposity! Calling yourself vegetarian and philanthropist and feminist and servant of god and activist and what-FUCKING-NOT

You are still fucking going to die, poor fool, whether you protected poor women or not, whether you ate that pig or not, whether you voiced your beautiful voice against capitalism or communism or social media or what have you

HOW DO YOU LIVE YOUR LIFE, EVERY DAY?!

This is what matters

And you will die either way and account to fuck all

But what is real is that at the end of this day… either you lived well — or you didn’t

Perhaps it really was the right thing for you to have spent this evening bickering about politics, or volunteered to help at animal shelter

I just want you to be conscious of the entire process

And make a conscious choice

How could you live better?

How could you and people around you live better?

How could we all live better?

“Good deeds” don’t make you good

At the end of the day, each day, you know what you did good and what not so much.