You’re not perfect — but you probably are NOT a “bad person”
Bear with me
We humans are sometimes too binary (and sometimes not binary enough)
When things really matter — things like life and death — we learn to be decisive, we learn to be binary
Things like good and bad
We learn this as children
“This is good”
“This is bad”
It’s all very traumatic then — because our world is small. Our world is small and everything is big.
The good is good — and the bad is really bad.
There are many psychological and spiritual mechanisms and cognitive biases which come at play there
The dichotomy of good and bad is quickly learned
It applies to the world — and applies to ourselves
Some of us operate within this simplistic paradigm till their dying days
Almost all of us are never entirely freed from some of our binary beliefs
Some people walk the world pointing at things and labelling them “good” or “bad”
Most people really. Just look at the media. At the binary nonsense in politics. At the guilty-not-guilty and right-or-wrong stupid dichotomies. At the binary titles, binary comments, binary conclusions
It’s generally a useful heuristic: The more binary someone is in his beliefs — the more delusional, petty and hopeless
(being binary in one’s decisiveness is a whole different matter however)
If you have any history of improving yourself and your situation — you likely have had conflicting observations before — and learned to held different conflicting beliefs at the same time — retaining flexibility and remaining humble. The reality doesn’t give a fuck about your opinions and how strongly you held them.
But then there’s the subject of YOU
Are you a bad person?
Are you a good person?
There’s the subject of you — and as soon as you develop your ego — which is that common denominator of your entire world-experience — as soon as you develop an ego — you learned to label it too
Sometimes you’re “good”
Sometimes you’re “bad”
You develop an ego so that you can protect yourself
As soon as you learn of good and bad — you apply this framework to yourself
When you’re good — things are looking good
When you’re bad — things are looking bad
And when you’re young — bad is really bad. “Bad” is an existential threat. It’s a threat of obliteration, of death.
Thus as you go about the rest of your life — you learn that the world is a bit less binary then you anticipated — but you don’t always learn the same truth about yourself
Mind you it is not a mere intellectual observation. Your consciousness — where the conscious and intellectual occurs — is only a tip of the iceberg. Underneath there’s a world of deep-seated beliefs which are far more difficult to eradicate.
Among them the idea that you’re a bad person.
And it’s very deeply-seated due to it’s perceived gravity — due to it being perceived as a matter of existential importance.
Now, are you a “bad person”?
Are you a good person?
NEITHER
The one whose asking this question is not really you
It’s the 3 year old you or 7 year old you — wondering if he’s a bad person — because he was too loud or made a mess — and if it’s going to be the end of him
It’s not really you
Whatever you did today — good or bad — it is likely NOT objective morally… and more then likely NOT existentially threatening
Alas you feel like it is
You remember what it felt like to be bad
Your body remembers
Sometimes something reminds you
And you feel terrible
And you feel terrible
And some of us experience it more often then others
And it ruins lives
Some of us fall down this deep spiral of negativity and self-loathing
It starts fuelling itself, and reinforcing
For the rest of us it’s perhaps only a hindrance — sometimes activated, “triggered” — to make us feel bad, perhaps temporarily paralyse us, slow us down
But it’s there
Are you a bad person?
No
You do horrible things, perhaps
Or you’re an angel
None of it matters
None of it answers this question of a 3 year old you — worrying about his survival on this planet
The 3 year old is asking a different question, a 3-year-old’s question — and you try to answer him with your stupid adult rationalizations
You, the adult you, you do what you do
Based on what you understand of the world — you choose the best action — for yourself — AND for the world
When you’re low — you’re misguided even about yourself
When you’re middling — you will be egoistic and short-sighted
When you’re higher — you begin to see that your brothers gain is your gain
But none of that alone necessarily makes you feel like you’re a “good person” or a “bad person”
Because again — this binary view of the world is that of the 3-year-old you
3-year-old-you who wetted his pants, to the dismay of his parents, and to this day this runs you, to this day you’re “dirty” and “handful” and “bad”
Plenty terrible people walk this earth
Murders and rapist
White collar criminals
Terribly toxic people
And deep within they rue the bashing their mother gave them more then the terrible sins they committed in their adult lives
And you are the same
You’re not perfect
You’re not ok
But you’re not THAT bad
You’re not as bad so as to die, unloved by your parents, abandoned, and left alone to die in the cruel, cold and strange world
You’re not perfect
You’re ignorant
You’re lazy
You’re vain
You’re stubborn
You’re dishonest
You’re confused
And it’s ok
You don’t know what you’re doing
Maybe you’ll learn
Or you’ll suffer for it
But you’re not “bad”
You’re just confused
You still have a chance
The world doesn’t know what you did when you were 3 or 53
You have another chance every day
It’s what you did today that matters
…
Take a deep breath
Breathe it out
The point is to go deeper then the conscious, the point is to release the tensions still present in your body from that initial trauma
Breathe it out
Then do something good for yourself today
And every day
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