Why “good” is not good enough.

For most of my life, I tried to be good: Follow the rules. Don’t do “bad” things. Do what I was told to do. Don’t hurt people. It was okay to ask questions, but for some reason, many of things seemed off limits. There appeared to be a subtle aversion and fear associated to the pursuit of the truth behind certain things. As I grew up, I came to the realization that doing good without knowing “why” did not suffice for me. I thought to myself: Maybe that’s just how I am— perhaps always wanting to know “why” is just my own way of overthinking.

But the more people I’ve come into contact with over the years, and the more people I’ve gotten to know personally, I have come to the conclusion that in actual fact, we naturally tend not to question many things. We generally take our lives at face value, go with the flow, and accept the standards that have been set for us. What am I talking about, specifically? Western culture, materialism, consumerism, fast food, fast fashion, religious standards without any explanation, prejudice and stereotyping, the list goes on. These are important concepts that we often overlook, not realizing that they actually affect us in deep ways relating to how we view ourselves and calculate our personal self-worth, or lack thereof.

I’ve discovered within myself that the concept of self-awareness and truly getting to know oneself is deeply lacking in our society. We are too busy comfortably living our day-to-day lives to be concerned with searching for truth—— the truths behind our insecurities, vulnerabilities and our histories, how we turned out the way that we are—— as individuals and as a community.

I think we would benefit immensely from learning to be more curious and contemplative, more questioning, and more inclined to search for truth.

In other words, “good” is not good enough. Because being “good” will not set you free, but the truth will.

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The original text which formed the above blackout poem was from a piece by Tanya Markul.

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