A series: Lessons I learned Teaching in my 20s.

Am I A good person?

I used to have a tendency of looking at things in a black-or-white manner (sometimes I still do). Is it childhood innocence?  or overgrown naiveness? As kids, we are taught that there are good and bad people, there is right and wrong, and there is love or hate.

When we grow up, we realize it’s never black or white; there’s so much in between. In fact, I’ve come to the realization it can never be black or white, and because we try so hard to categorize things as such, we rarely ever acknowledge the in-between.

Us as people, the decisions we make, the way we think, who we are at the core—it's all in between.

Because we rarely acknowledge the grey area, we are constantly chasing one or the other extreme, and in this chase, along with our aspirations and goals, we lose ourselves. It’s so hard making decisions because we want so badly for them to be the right ones, but that doesn’t exist. Everything is in between.

There’s no such thing as categorically good or bad people. There’s no such thing as categorically good or bad decisions.

When I started teaching, I had to constantly make so many decisions every day, and I didn’t find it easy at all. I was always trying to be ethical, good, and make the right choices. Even the simplest decisions, such as excusing an absence for a student, would trouble me.
There are exceptions to every rule, right?
Is this the exception?
Will this enable certain behavior?
Is it fair?
What about those who didn’t speak up because they adhere to the rules but could use the same leniency? Is it fair?
What if it demotivates them?
What if it becomes a habit?

Every single decision I had to make, I constantly thought about what’s best for the corresponding student and students as a whole, the community, and if it was ethical, if it aligned with my religion and values. It’s so exhausting. 

I was trying so hard to constantly make the “right-est” decision and be a good person.

In the beginning of my journey, I was in a whirlwind of self-doubt. I constantly doubted my decisions, and I never felt like I made the “right” ones, no matter how much I tried. This doubt kept manifesting itself into a monster that haunted me at the most unprecedented moments. It made it so hard for me to prepare myself for when it came because it was always so unexpected.

The monster was one single question that had the ability to ruin my day, suck all the joy out of my heart, and rob me of any shred of energy left:

Am I a good person?

Every day, it was a battle between my motivation to become a better person versus the monstrous question: 

Am I a good person?

I kept losing.

To doubt the goodness of my heart was such a heavy burden that I had to carry around with me everywhere I went. It became too heavy, breaking my back, and I couldn’t set it down. Because if I set it down, it felt worse, but if I carried it, I became more and more impaired.

Am I a good person?

One day, I overheard a discussion between my coworkers where they were bringing up certain students and discussing if they were “good” or “bad.” I heard a couple of names of students that were currently registered in my courses, and I was shocked at their respective judgments of them. Students that I enjoyed teaching and who thrived in my class were labeled as “bad” by them and vice-versa.

As I was asking them more questions about what they meant by good or bad—was it their commitment to attending? Their demeanor or mannerisms? What made them good or bad?—I realized how much went into it. 

It’s not, and should never be, a simple judgment. I also realized I couldn’t label anyone I know, let alone those students, as good or bad.

The internal battle within me and those conversations led me to a few revelations, firstly some basic, but freeing ones: 

1. No one is either good or bad.

2. There are no perfectly good or perfectly bad choices.

3. There’s goodness and badness in everyone and everything.

The second major revelation was that if you question your goodness as a human being, that is a sign of having more good in you than bad.

Why did I say that or do that? Whose best interest was that really for? What were my real intentions?

Am I a good person?

Third, to constantly question yourself and reflect on your actions is the only way you become more of a good person.

Fourth, it’s not easy being good. We must constantly cleanse our hearts. We must treat our hearts as fragile and easily tainted. That process of constant self-reflection and assessment feels like I’m reaching out into my chest and extracting my heart, turning it around in my hand, examining it from all angles. Washing every stain, dipping it in cold water, sterilizing it—and some stains are harder to wash out than others. Some remain longer than others.  Some require more attempts than others. Most of the time it hurts. Scrubbing until it’s fully clean and putting it back into my chest until the next opportunity to cleanse it again. If I wait too long, the stains add up and it becomes more difficult and painful. 

It’s not easy, but if we practice it frequently, it does become easier. It’s exhausting and hard for me, but it has become easier. 

We aren’t born good or bad, we don’t become good or bad, we must constantly try to have more goodness in our hearts. Good hearts are earned.