Plot twist : I’m the antagonist.
Good parents do what good parents always do: they believe in, and, as a result, forgive their children. Children will get their heads stuck in fences, rip open couches, and set the inside of your fridge on fire (say my parents recalling my childhood), but at the end of the day you will forgive them. I bet your parents did the same for you. You could mess up but, in essence, you can do no wrong.
Why?
No matter what I did, it seemed my parents performed some mental gymnastics to put my behavior in the best light possible. To a certain extent it is true that a fair amount of my behavior could be attributed to reactions to external factors that were beyond my control, but why would they choose to see only those points? Is it because they love me? Was it because admitting that I was a bad kid would meaning admitting to themselves and to the world that they had somehow messed up in raising me?
I’m not sure, and honestly I think my parents did an amazing job of dealing with my nonsense. I am eternally grateful for every opportunity they have presented to me.
Towards the end of my high school career, I was in detention almost every week. There was not a single PTA meeting that didn’t end with variation of my mum in tears, leaning into the back seat and trying to slap me in the car on the way home while my dad scowled at me in the rear view mirror. Can you blame them? They worked their ass off to get me into one of the best private schools in the country — barely making the payments in addition to all my extracurricular activities. I was not a grateful kid and yet, they always forgave me. They never went crazy. They were never abusive but I pushed them a lot. But, they always forgave me.
Through it all, and even now, they see in me some sort of otherworldly potential. They believe in me. All they have to do is, they believe, make me realize that and they would have done their job. They couldn’t give up on me because they believed in me. They believed there was good to be found, no matter what.
So that’s how I grew up. I grew up thinking that I was a good person. I grew up wanting for nothing and with two dedicated parents that love me to a fault. I grew up thinking that I was a good person who was just a little mischievous. It was easy for me to believe this because the two people that I had most of my contact with always forgave me no matter how spiteful and ungrateful my actions. I grew up believing that I was the protagonist in my own story.
Recently I had the experience of having to watch someone, whom I claimed to love and care for deeply, get closer to an opportunity that had the potential to change my life if I would get it. My girlfriend and I applied for a fellowship position. She got an interview and I didn’t.
We are all told what a good person would do in this situation. We know what we should do. We should be happy for the people we love; that’s what good people do. Good people get excited and happy for the good fortune of their loved ones, regardless of their own impoverished circumstances. Good people support and help the people they love along a path towards opportunities that they themselves would die for. I believed I was a good person.
My girlfriend sent me a screenshot of the email informing her of the interview as soon as she saw it. I cannot remember my immediate reaction because it was in the next instance replaced by envy, or maybe that was my immediate reaction — a deep, burning sensation. The feeling presented itself to me like a pulsating jugular vein to a vampire, and I sank my fangs into it without hesitation. My mind presented to me an endless torrent of objectively true facts to distinctly outline exactly how unfair this was.
I’m the one that told her about it!
I’m the one that even cares about it!
It’s perfect for me!
Why did she even apply?!
She knew there was only a limited number of spots!
She stole it from me!
On and on and on…
The truth is, most of the facts on offer were objectively true. I am indeed the one who told her about it. I had been working hard on the subject matter while she hadn’t been, etc.
I let her have it. I unleashed all of this on her over the phone. As I watched the words, followed by sentences, followed by paragraphs of venom bubble up into consciousness, I was quickly becoming horrified. It felt good to hurt her. It felt good to hear her cry and apologize in between sobs. It felt right. It felt justified. Why?
Why am I doing this? Is it because I’m a good person and I have the right to do this? Why does it feel like she deserves it? It felt like I was watching myself from outside my own body. I figured I’m just angry. I don’t actually believe these things. I’m just lashing out because I’m upset and disappointed in myself. It will pass in a few minutes and I’ll be okay.
A few minutes passed and nothing changed. The lava still followed, and the more it flowed, the less convinced I became of its eventual dissipation and the more horrified I became.
Where was the good person? Surely the good person in me would appear soon enough and put out this fire. I waited and waited. Minutes turned into hours and the hours into the next day. My insides still burned. I was still waiting for the good person to show up. I am a good person, I thought.
That night, laying in bed unable to fall asleep, my heart racing, the sound of my girlfriend crying running in loops in my head, I learned that there are no “good people”. There is no bat signal that I can put out for a good person to come save me. I realized that I operate on a continuum of good and bad, and that given the right circumstances and fuel, I’d slip on villainy like a well-fitting glove and take it all out on the people I care about the most.
I’ve lived my life believing that I was the protagonist of my own story. I thought that it was a state of being that was immutable and static. I believed that I would never be intentionally cruel and hurtful to the people I care about because I am a good person, but there I was using every weakness, embarrassing moment, mistake, and secret she risked telling me, and using these to hurt her precisely where it would hurt the most.
It’s made me think about all the other things I convinced myself I wouldn’t do because I’m a “good person”.
Would I kill someone?
Would I rob a bank?
Would I cheat on my girlfriend?
Am I absolutely incapable of doing certain things as a consequence of a static attribute of my soul, or have I just not been confronted with the right circumstances to be a “bad person”?
It appears me to that there is no static “goodness” about me. It appears to me that I am presented with opportunities to be good, and I have to choose to be good when I have every reason not to be. I can’t seem to count on my history of good deeds to save me.
It never gets easier for me. You’d think if you do enough of the “good” thing, enough times over that it would become natural. I guess that would take the meaning out of the choices that we make ( I do believe that we make choices — I believe in free will). I guess it would take the possibility of redemption, the possibility of forgiveness, out of life. To me it feels like no matter how many times I might have been a “good person”, I can never rest and believe that I will make the good, right or loving choice by default. It is not my default setting but maybe that’s just me.
Why is it that the actions driven by the strongest emotions usually end up being the worst choice possible? To me, it feels like reactions driven by emotion are managed by a different version of me — a version of me that lives in a universe devoid of a future self. A naive self before the scales dropped from my eyes.
It appears to me that life is like a choose-your-own-adventure book and with each choice, you get to decide if you’re going to be the protagonist or the antagonist and you don’t know which role you’ve been playing until you get to the last page — hopefully it’s not too late.
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart — and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained “— Alexander Solzhenitsyn
