Day 2 - The Good Guy Syndrome

Hell was a topic that was talked about a lot to me  from an early age; ‘you’re gonna go to hell if you don’t do this or that’ is what I would hear from my parents and my teachers and most of everyone who was around in my early life. it was something that I initially felt very scared of.

When early adolescence came, so did my rebellion, I rejected traditional faith and went in search of meaning elsewhere in other eastern philosophies, those that did not have a notion of heaven or hell, but rather samadhi or enlightenment. So in my head I was saying to myself ‘I don’t believe in hell anymore’.

The idea that I had to be a ‘Good Guy’ still stuck though, that whatever I did in my life I had to be the image and embodiment of Goodness, that was the prime directive - no matter what I do, it must be GOOD.

And so today in my life I see myself as the walking, talking thing that attempts to emulate Goodness in every unreal gesture, facial expression, voice tone, and word that I use to get through the jungle of the world. I would say I have become very good at it.

It is very tiring however, I did not realise how much hard work it is to be in what is essentially an acting role every single moment of nearly every day, from the moment I wake, to the moment I fall asleep. Around parents, friends, colleagues, and the rest of the world, it’s all just a show that I put on. And with the tiredness comes the need to relax, to be bad, to go into a drunken or drug induced stupor because ‘life is such hard work’.

We only have to sit on a park bench to hear how people are going to reward themselves for having been ‘really good’ when they get home, that they will treat themselves to unnecessary food intake, or buy things that they don’t need, or gorge on their favourite chocolates because they’ve just done that 10k run.

So who am I putting this show on for?

I would say it was for other people, so that my life is easier with them, so that I do not ruffle any feathers, so that I die a good person and get into my personal vision of heaven. There is the point that I am very afraid of upsetting other people, of getting into conflict, of ‘being in a fight’ - of generally upsetting people’s sensibilities. It as if to say my life is entirely about not upsetting other people.

What would happen to me if I stopped caring about other people in this way - stopping the attention that I give to what other people think of me, if I actually started Caring for Real? If I Stopped the Show.