How do you go about being good? I ask because I’ve been hung up recently on trying to be, well ... better. It’s a bit ridiculous and embarrassing; also, if asked to corroborate, my family would definitely say they haven’t noticed.
I’m not aiming for saintly. I haven’t started believing some celestial bouncer will decide whether I get to live on a cloud with Captain Tom, or send me downstairs to change king-sized duvet covers and parallel park for all eternity watched by Hitler and Stalin while listening to hold music.
It’s more that I’m increasingly conscious of how far I still am from being a decent human, able to do what a person should: have healthy relationships, be compassionate, floss regularly, live within planetary boundaries, that sort of thing.
It’s a mini-midlife crisis, I guess. It’s certainly new.
I’ve always been impervious to self-improvement, and mentally delegated family altruism duties to my sister, who is good to a fault. I don’t think the idea I could be better has really crossed my mind in the past 20-plus years. It might be because, however ineptly, I did sincerely try to be a good parent, and now my sons have left home there’s less of that in my life, meaning I can attempt to be "good" in other ways.
It might also be because I’m happier. I like where I live, enjoy work, and things are good with my husband (well, they were until I cursed us by writing this). That means I can ask myself harder questions. I haven’t much liked what I’ve found: I’m incompetent, cowardly, impatient and not very nice (I mean, a nicer person would have worried about this stuff decades ago, surely).
Anyway, trying to be better is distinctly un-fun. There seems to be no positive trajectory, just a forward-backward shuffle like a crap rumba. I’ve had two positive reports from the dental hygienist this year and managed to give an appropriate and wholehearted apology for some unjustified shouting, but I seem globally crosser and grindingly negative. I tracked all the things I said out loud to myself over a few weeks and it was almost exclusively variations on "I hate everything" (plus, I drove the car into a fence post and why do I have a car? That’s problematic in itself).
I’m hung up on small stuff, but even that’s hard. I’ve decided it’s hypocritical to worry about declining insect numbers - and murder the fat flies that blunder into my office then smash themselves repeatedly against the window. Maddened by their buzzing, I shout at the confused, ancient dog when he comes up to request, once again, the breakfast he had hours ago. I wash out plastic tubs my husband puts in the bin, but then I’m resentful for hours.
Is any of that a net good? My doomed striving for ethical purity makes me horrible: my husband, who worries less about methane and insects, is far nicer than I am.
What to do? On the endless ethical whack-a-mole small stuff, it has helped to read work by consumption researchers on the "ethical consumption cap": the systemic, structural limits to what we can achieve as individuals. Of course, we all knew already that getting a coffee in a reusable cup won’t bring the polar ice back, whatever problematic milk you choose - but somehow reading it fully, expertly reasoned, helps. "The human condition combines with contemporary consumer culture to make the ideal of a consistently ethical lifestyle almost impossible to achieve," I read, and a weight lifted, or at least lightened.
It’s tougher to know how to tackle the big stuff - therapy? HRT? - but what helps so far is gardening. I’m pretty clueless. I only got interested two years ago when we moved to a place full of needy green stuff, but since then, I’ve realised something is always wrong. Always! The hydrangeas are iron deficient, the beans have fallen over and the honeysuckle is shrivelling. I should be deadheading, pulling bindweed, trying to work out what has afflicted the sickly shrub whose name I don’t know. It’s endless.
I can’t fix it all, but I can tackle bits, here and there. Maybe the hydrangeas will die while I try to find out if fertilising them is bad for the planet. With bits of effort when I have the time and energy, the garden won’t be great, but it won’t be terrible either. It might sustain a few insects; it certainly gives me hours of pleasure. I seem to be able to accept that approach for the garden, so - and this makes me cringe my whole body inside out, but allowing a little sincerity into my life might be good for me - I’m trying to apply it to myself.
- Guardian News and Media
