TOW: Being a good person is hard

I have had a bit of an epiphany this week.

Being a good person is difficult.  But it's not difficult for the reasons I used to think it was difficult.

I think I used to think being good was difficult because I felt like I was a lighthouse being battered during a storm...I was in a waking nightmare of 'bad.'  And it took restraint to remain good.  It was a case of break versus win...and to win was only to weather a storm, not to win.

The reason it is so hard to be good, I think, is because being bad, acting badly, does not feel bad.  We judge ourselves good, always.  Even when we curse ourselves, we still think ourselves better than other people.  But if we are truly being good, it is nearly untenable.  It is a storm to be weathered. 

We have eyes made for the dark, not for the light.  Good things, not unlike a painting, are more pleasant the farther we are away from them; it is the illusion of what good means to us from far away that contributes to being bad.  The 'light' of good things is gentle when we are far from good. 

To be good means to burn, to be bad means to bask pleasantly in the idea that we are good people; good people as we do terrible things to ourselves and to other people.  As we break moral laws and codes, we still think we're good.

Being bad, most days, feels nice.  Being good, however, is work.