is doing good always good?

an edited version of the ff. piece was published last saturday 11/25/06 in the crossline section of sunstar cebu's weekend magazine

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is doing good always good?

this question entered my mind when a curious thing happened to me on the way home from work one night. i was walking to the jeepney stop where i usually get my ride when i met one of the security guards from my office on the way. he flashed a wide grin when he saw me, almost like a sigh of relief.

"bossing!", we greeted each other. this was followed by some chitchat on what floor of the office building i was actually in and under what department i belonged to. after about a minute or so, my already grumbling stomach reminded me to get home, so i was about to end the conversation when he asked me if he could borrow twenty pesos so he could get a ride home.

this surprised me a bit. we weren't close. i didn't know his name, and he probably didn't know mine. we just called each other "bossing". i didn't even like the guy so much, as he was the guard who always seemed to be so strict on me, inspecting me everytime i enter the office to see if i was wearing the proper attire, while everybody else escapes his scrutiny. but i thought, "uhhh ok... sure, why not? this is my chance to do something nice to someone who's practically a stranger..." i quickly took out from my wallet a crisp twenty peso bill and gave it to him.

he apologetically took the money and thanked me, saying that his salary had been delayed by the security agency. i assured him that it was no problem. after a final word of thanks from him, we parted and i went back on my way. then something unexpectedly bothered me.

i felt guilty.

yes, you read that right. i felt guilty. of all things to feel guilty about, it was for doing a good thing. weird. why? this i pondered on the ride home.

was it really a "good" thing in the first place? it couldn't have been inherently bad. the guy needed help, and i gave it to him. i did it without any ulterior motive behind me, no plan of using it to gain something for myself, and expecting nothing in return. common sense dictates that it couldn't have been a bad thing in itself.

could it have been just my exasperation over the general unfairness of the world? maybe. here i was, with some extra money i didn't need that badly, and there he was, the opposite of me, needing just a little money to get home but not having it. he might even have a family waiting for him to bring something home for the dinner table.

but the world IS generally unfair to everyone, me included. it can't be my fault that the world is unfair. it just is. we are all the walking wounded, as they say. the world piles upon us all layer upon layer of crap and we are all just fellow sufferers in this shared predicament. so it can't be that. so why the guilt?

then it hit me. there is something so deliciously superior about doing a good thing to someone in need. i actually felt a bit smug about doing the "good" deed, as if i felt good that he was in situation where he needed my help. as if i was happy that i had an advantage over him so i could "help" him.

it's the same way you can consider acts of charity as basically acts of vanity too. giving those "bundles of joy" every christmas not just calms your own conscience. it also confirms your superiority over the benificiaries of your benevolence, not just in terms of material wealth, but also in goodness, as if goodness can be bought with wealth.

so is that what the good feeling you get after doing something good really is, a confirmation of your superiority? a mere ego boost?

they say good should not be a means to an end, it should be an end in itself. but human nature always seems to find a way to twist the good. does this stop us then from doing the good?

as humans, we can never be perfect. but it is also human to aspire to be perfect. we live our lives in an endless struggle to attain our ideals.

the myth of sisyphus comes to mind. for his crimes against the gods, sisyphus was condemned to roll a boulder up the side of a hill and topple it down the other side. but just when he is about to reach the top and succeed, his strength fails him and the boulder rolls back down the mountain. he goes back for the boulder, begins again, and the cycle continues.

like sisyphus, we labor on to reach our ideal of good. but just when we seem to be getting there, we commit mistakes, things that we know are wrong, things that bother our consience. we are doomed to fail in our attempt to reach perfection.

but that does not mean we stop. even if we may never reach perfection in our daily lives, our effort to reach it adds meaning to our life. it is in the struggle that we find meaning.

thus we must labor on and run the good race, even if at times we fall down, even if we fail, because our failures are bridges to Him in Whom we will find perfection.