February 14, 2006

At a certain point in life most of us get to a place where we are pretty comfortable with who we are. Despite that, I’ve noticed we still manage to struggle with being a good person. What makes someone “good” and another person “bad”, and what is about each of us that are attracted to the dark or the light? I bring this up because it came up more than once recently in conversations with different people. It seems whichever way we, ahem, swing we’re always hoping to experiment with the other.

Ok, sure this isn’t a big mystery. The grass always looks greener on the other side and while there are things or people we think we can’t do or be, it is so damn exciting to imagine it – even if it is for a minute. Given all the ways we segregate ourselves in society (in secret, of course) good and bad are probably one of the last categories of division that still aren’t taboo to say out loud and everyone is usually in one camp. You’re either on “Team Jennifer” or “Team Angelina”.

I was talking to my girlfriend and she was telling me how she has trouble relating with some other friends of hers. It’s not that she didn’t enjoy their company. She thought they were all great but, it was as if she wasn’t as free to be herself around them – her whole self. They were “goody-goodies” as we like to call them. You know the type – that borderline annoyingly sweet girl or guy who always seems to say and do exactly the right thing. “Oh no, I don’t drink,” or my personal favorite “I could never do THAT,”; that individual that makes you feel like you have lived this debauched life even if the most you’ve ever done is shoplift – once. Not there is anything wrong with any of these fine qualities, it just mucks up the relating a bit when you are not said, “goody-goody”.

All this talk of good girls, made me think of one of my closest friends growing up. She was a “bad girl” in the truest sense of the word. She drank, smoked, cursed, chased boys. She was great and I loved hanging out with her even if my parents held their breath every time I was with her. Yes, it was exciting just thinking we could get into trouble but was she a criminal? No, she meant no harm and as s a friend she was fiercely loyal. Or maybe it was just me and I couldn’t resist temptation.

Now as I said, there is nothing wrong with being a “goody-goody” or a ‘bad girl/boy”. I believe both can co-exist if you are willing to expand your definition. If not, I’ll be honest it does make things harder and frankly easier to fall from grace. I have this one friend that whenever we get together, gets a gleeful, slightly sadistic and definitely voyeuristic pleasure from asking me what “wild and crazy” things her single friend is up to. At first I felt a lot pressure to come up with something unbelievable to tell her I did last Friday night, even if the truth was I watched “Zoolander,”…again.. Then it started to bother me because it seemed to be less out of genuine interest and more about personal titillation, but I think I get it now. It was, is fun for her. She worries me because I fear she may do something completely out of character one of these days. She’s the type that I’m afraid, in an attempt to cram in all her “bad girl” desires, one day does something irreversible like cheating on a spouse or gives up everything to study scientology (not that is anything wrong with that, TomKat).

The second time this topic came up last week another friend and I were discussing a mutual friend. This mutual friend is a great guy. I love him. He’s funny, he’s smart and he’s compassionate. He is not however, a good boy or at least not by the conventional definition. It’s when he tries to be good or at least what I think, he thinks is expected of him that things get messy. It usually involves a lot of alcohol and some blackouts. I think this is because our inherent nature, whether we like it or not, eventually shines through. is definite Is he a work in progress? Yes. But at this age, it’s our responsibility to be, as cliché as it is, true to our selves. I’m not advocating hedonism, rather responsible self-indulgence. Kind of like the beer ads – drink responsibly.

Back to my friend in elementary school, the thing is I don’t think I ever saw her as bad, just flawed. And while on the surface we may have seemed different, I saw them in me too. It’s amazing what insight you have into yourself at thirteen. I think it’s when we try and pretend the flaws aren’t there that we get into trouble. Besides, isn’t it our flaws that make us all so unique and interesting? I remember when I first met my now 5-year old niece who is hell on wheels in her parents’ eyes. She had this look in her eye just as she was about to do something she’d probably got into trouble for. She manages to always just tiptoe over the line but never quite step into we’re-sending-her-to-military-school territory. I looked at her and she looked at me and I couldn’t help but smile just a little because in that moment we recognized something in the other. I smiled and I thought, “Yeah, she’s a bad girl. Thank god.”