Paradox Of Being a Good Person

I want to recall a moment to start. Back home, when I used to work in a restaurant as a server, I had this experience. It was my very first time working and being involved in a professional environment. As a novice, I really didn’t know about any kind of workplace ethics; I was simply there to serve and work. There were already three people working there when I joined, and I noticed something: nobody really helped anyone. When you close the restaurant, you have to clean everything and set it up for the next day. That meant placing all the cutlery and plates if you were the one opening the restaurant the next morning. Now, I wasn’t scheduled to open the restaurant, so technically, I didn’t have to help. But I still did. I helped whoever had to set the place up for the next day, not because someone asked me, or because I wanted to be a “good” person. I did it simply because I was free and had the energy to help someone out. But once I started doing that, people around me began to build expectations. It wasn’t seen as a kind gesture anymore. It turned into an invisible obligation. It was no longer a favor; it was a pattern. Rather than appreciating the favor, it ended up building expectations, and one day, when I said I didn’t want to help, I still ended up doing it because I felt guilty.

That’s when I realized something: I wasn’t just being nice. I was trapped in a paradox.

The paradox of being a good person.

Why is that a bad thing?

In All the Ways Things Could Go: An Immersive Guided Journal Experience, there’s a reference that stuck with me. A middle-aged couple is together, and the husband is lying on his deathbed with his wife beside him. He says that his life, more or less, was never about him. He struggled with building up an image, wanting people around him to like him, but he never did it for himself.

It felt weirdly personal. A strange paradox of narcissism and self-abandonment.

You get so caught up in trying to become someone that others will love and appreciate that you forget yourself. Do you really love yourself, or just the idea of loving yourself?

A person like that isn’t good or bad. In fact, are they even a person at all?

I’ve struggled to come out of this paradox. The guilt in me just wouldn’t let me.

But guilt for what, exactly? We’re all raised with the message: “Be a good person.”But no one really teaches us about boundaries. So we overdo for people.

And that raises the question, was that ever what we wanted? Or did we do it simply because not helping someone, even when we don’t want to, makes us feel like a bad person?

For me, it does.

I believe I carry this unwanted mental baggage of “being there” for everyone.

But why? Why do I feel the need to be there for people who don’t even care for themselves?

Why do I instinctively try to protect those who can’t or won’t protect themselves?

Who the fuck do I think I am?

Has the universe assigned me this duty to help everyone around me?

Do I really think I’m that special?

A strange paradox of narcissism and self-abandonment, I repeat.

So, how do we get out of it?

Well, it might sound disappointing, but I asked AI.

And honestly, it’s kinda sad that something like this is so hard to talk about with people. Because the kind of person who would get this, really get this, is maybe one in hundreds.

But among all the things AI said, there was one line I liked the most.

As I said, I helped because I really had nothing to do.

AI said, “Then rest.”

It kinda felt like a mic drop moment, won't lie.

I had been working 12 hours. I was free. I could’ve just...rested.

But instead, I helped because “doing nothing” made me feel guilty.

But doing nothing is also doing something.

It’s not a waste of time; it’s valuing your own space. Your own self.

I wish I could have simply said no back then.

But here, I promise to take a small step, to slowly step out of this crazy paradox.