thread: 2006-09-08 : Salvation, damnation, justification, a la Sydney
On 2006-09-12, joshua m. neff wrote:
Sydney, of course I still do stupid, fearful, hurtful things. And yes, I strive not to do those. Now, unfortunately, I'm going to get semantic here, which I'm usually loathe to do. When I say I don't want to be a better person, I mean this: I don't think I'm a bad person, and I'm not striving to be a "more good" person. (Sometimes I do actually think, "Man, I suck. I'm a horrible person." Like I said, this is exactly the kind of hurtful—in this case, hurtful to myself—behavior I strive to stop doing.) Yes, I want to change. But change doesn't mean "bad to good." I want to learn more, be less afraid, be less selfish and thoughtless, be less hurtful to myself and others. But I don't want to think of myself as a "bad" person who needs to be a "better" person. Most of the time, I am, in fact, a happy person. I'm married to my best friend, we have an amazing daughter, my job is exactly what I want to do with my life for money, I have terrific friends, and things are good. My wife and I don't make as much money as I'd like, I wish my cholesterol level was lower. But I am overall happy with who I am and where I am in the world.
Here's a thing: my wife has some health issues that come from years of her abusing her body through various eating disorders (bulimia, anorexia, binge eating). She engaged in this behavior because she was concerned with controlling herself and perfecting herself. Seeing what this thinking has done to her, it seems to me that obsessing over being a "better" person can be horribly damaging. You know what I think would be much healthier? Not trying to be a better person but instead being happy and satisfied with who you are, right here and now. My wife makes me insanely happy. She makes our daughter happy. She makes our friends happy. She doesn't need to be better. She does, however, need to stop worrying about being "bad" and stop worrying about how she needs to be "better."
This is all incredibly simplified, and my thoughts on "good" and "bad" people are much more complex. Too complex for me to get down here, right now. (I'm at work, so I really shouldn't even be posting here right now.)
