Henry Muhumuza

The mental image that comes to me first when I picture being good (as in, a good human being) is a glass of pure, clear water. By contrast, I suppose being bad would be a glass of black, muddy water. Of course there's a whole spectrum of states between these two polar opposites: different degrees of muddiness or cloudiness, so to speak. Still, I find it hard to accept that there can be a spectrum to goodness. In my mind, any deviation from the perfectly clear glass of water automatically registers as bad. I guess I'm still reflexively vulnerable to the fallacy of false dichotomy; not even my awareness of its existence helps.

Every day, even every minute, there's a constant two-natured traffic: something or someone trying to muddy our glass of pure water. It can be an insult, bad weather, any trying inconvenience. Likewise, an encouraging remark or a compliment from a colleague feels like a top-up of that pure, clear water. From my false-dichotomy confession earlier, you can see the scales aren't balanced. A relatively small amount of the muddy is enough to turn our opinion of the glass of clear water it's added to. Anyone who has worked with inks or dyes knows that even the tiniest drop of black ink can turn the entirety of the water in a glass black, though not if it's a large tank, or an ocean. An adage I came across in medical school applies here: "The solution to contamination is dilution."

Essentially, to stay pure (good), you need a very high dilutional capacity to negate the contaminating influence of the everyday "inks." That capacity is partly a function of one's nature (a genetic lottery they have no control over), and partly a function of the internal regulatory mechanisms they've built over time.

With this analogy, you can readily understand, even relate to, indifferent or avoidant attitudes toward struggle in others: the man in a suit who quickly crosses to the opposite side of the street when a homeless person walks toward him; the guy who cuts off his friend with a drug problem; the wife who divorces her husband over his gambling addiction; the person who mutes a family member who's always asking for money; the mother who warns her kid never to play with kids from that infamous neighborhood.

Coming into contact with darkness is scary. Perhaps they fear they don't have enough dilutional capacity to come into contact with struggle and come out unchanged. "What if my help isn't enough, and they judge me?" "What if I become like them?" "What if I don't have enough left for me?" "What if my help is useless and just makes things worse?"

It's all fear, and justified fear at that. A special kind of groundedness and confidence in one's own capacity is needed to overcome this mental block, something truly beautiful to witness when you encounter someone with this rare nature. The figure who comes to mind is Jesus Christ, the central figure of Christianity, who went into the lowest echelons of society and dined with outcasts. Perhaps he was so certain of his own nature that no amount of contact with corruption, pain, and struggle could change it. Or better still, that it could turn that darkness into good. Brave.

That is ink that is distant from us. But the story doesn’t end there. This phenomenon also affects how we respond to darkness or struggle we are already in the middle of. How do we treat others we find ourselves in the same predicament with? Can we create enough separation from the darkness that engulfs us? Rise above it, perhaps. I sometimes find that I feel pretentious behaving in a healthy way in an unhealthy environment. Like being courteous to a job candidate with whom you are applying for the same job, considering their humanity, not just seeing them as a corporate adversary. Being patient with a sibling in a stressful home. Being gentle and loving to your child even when barely affording to pay bills and put food on the table. Can we be good to others, under shared suffering or struggle?

Being good also requires a considerable degree of empathy, and empathy is a function of one's bandwidth. Bandwidth is a kind of data highway – the wider it is, the more data (traffic) can flow at once without causing congestion. Only in this case, what we're transmitting isn't data, but attention and emotion. There's only so much emotion one can process, and only so much attention one can give. Say your friend is having an emotional breakdown and needs you to be there for them, but your eyes are hurting and you have a deadline at work or school. So there's that. There's only so much you can process and respond to.

So yeah, being good is not a default state. It takes conscious effort, sometimes swimming upstream against one's own nature, to be good.