Hypocrite.
I was trying to be a good human being because I thought if I were that way, the universe would make sure nothing bad would ever happen to me… but little did I know I was the bad happening to me. Little did I know that my moral superiority was thriving a lot more than my goodness.
I didn’t want to be good anymore because “others who weren’t good"—things were so great for them, and what did I get from being good? Nothing but pain…”
So, I rebelled. And I rebelled for the wrong reasons. I cried for days and nights, kept blaming the universe, questioned everything, and searched for justice in the wrong places. When the foundation was that shaky, life was meant to fall apart for me.
But you know what the best thing about life is? It gives you multiple chances to rebuild it. It was just waiting for me to focus on myself because I was the one who was being unfair with myself. No way could it help me because I was the one who didn’t see how I was placing myself last because that would mean I would be labeled selfless, and selflessness is one of the qualities a good person must have, and eventually that would lead me to happiness. I didn’t care about how going out of the way for people who didn’t even care for my existence had an effect on me because I was busy being good. I didn’t focus on the intention behind being good because I didn’t really focus on the starting point but more on the end result. I didn’t bother to understand what being good even is… and I still don’t get it, but that’s not the point of this article.
Back to the end result now—I expected the universe would reward me, but thank God it didn’t, because if it did, I wouldn’t get a chance to question it. Question the fact that I kept neglecting my needs, my well-being? Why was it so important for me to be good and hurt myself while trying to carry that label? Was external validation that important? Why was it so necessary that people would call me a “good” human being? Why? Why did stabbing myself in the back feel easier than having a backbone? Why was I a people pleaser? Why did I crave love so much so that I loved myself the least?
I got answers. And eye-opening ones. Devastatingly beautiful ones. Tough truth I’d had to face. Not that I was all bad but I wasn’t all good either… because what’s “good” or “bad” anyway? Who gets to define it? Who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong? Who’s to judge? Where’s the rulebook? And I was so blind that I had hardly realized that I was operating with moral superiority and fear.
I feared that things would go wrong if I were bad because things had always been bad in my life, and deep down, I was just protecting myself from hurt. It was just being human. And being human is quite complicated. It’s not 1-dimensional or 1-track that I can label myself as a good or a bad human being and feel happy or guilty about it. I can’t carry a label as an identity because it limits my existence.
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What are these labels but just adjectives, which are just words created by us? If it were just “I,” I wouldn’t know any of these; I wouldn’t carry any of these, and I would definitely not identify myself with any of these either. I can’t bound any human being by just one word. Shouldn’t the words keep changing if I do label someone because human beings change? The world changes too, doesn’t it? But the way I looked at a person didn’t change for years. And an even more important question was, “How did I have the time to judge another human being and label them with an adjective?”
I have seen celebrities change their opinions, and people have held them at gunpoint (not quite literally), saying, “Hey, wait… didn’t you say that back then, and now you are saying this?!?!?” I have also judged my friends and relatives when they have had a different POV than before. But don’t erasers exist?? Don’t we have more than 1 blank sheet of paper? And, by the way, doesn’t more than 1 adjective exist?
In fact I do call myself a hypocrite because I have been one…
My opinions will keep changing because I will keep changing. Change is quite important; it’s quite important to strive, learn, unlearn, cry, laugh, love, and forgive. And I forgave myself only when I changed. Change is inevitable, and I learned it the hard way.
I can’t stop the world from labeling me, and even I can’t because this system is part of the world, and I am part of this world, but as long as I don’t identify with it, I won’t be bound by it, and I won’t lose my freedom like I had lost before while trying to be “good.” It hurt me because it was my identification. I thought if I weren’t good, I would cease existing. My ego was crumbling, and so I feared. I feared changing myself because I thought, what would people think of me? What would they think of me if I started putting my needs before theirs? What would they think of me if I became selfish? What would they call me if not good? I would be called bad, and that was my worst nightmare. That held me back from growing for my own betterment, and I could never be happy because I was lying to myself. So, yeah, I am not good anymore because that was the worst label I’d labelled myself and identified with…
And now, with absolutely no fear, I am a hypocrite, I am bad, and all that that isn’t good. And, as long as I don’t identify with any of it, I think I am GOOD :)
(With reference to the previous article—No, it turns out, I didn’t really dislike myself… it was just a bunch of adjectives I was trying to be.)
