Last week I did some babysitting for a family friend who was having a tough time balancing work and childcare over the summer holidays, and for the entire 4 hours that I was left in charge of two 9 year olds I just couldn't stop thinking about when they'll be gone & I can finally use words like 'dickhead' and 'shit' again. But as soon as they were finally gone, it hit me - I am a complete & utter dickhead for wanting these, quite frankly, adorable kids out of my life so I can go about my daily tirade of bad words. In all honesty, I felt kind of awful.
Fast forward a few hours & a bottle of wine later, I was in the garden convincing my best friend that she's not a bad person for being slightly jealous of her friend's amazingly beautiful wedding ceremony. Everyone gets jealous at times, and as long as you can overcome your emotions & not wreck someone's marriage because you were really impressed with their wedding venue, you're a decent person by my standards.
Ultimately, the guilt and paranoia (and probably the wine) got the best of us in the end, thrusting us into a 3 hour long analysis of what makes someone a good person. Am I a bad person for being jealous of my boyfriend's new car, my friend's ability to eat her body weight in carbs & still remain a size 0, or the new IT girl at work's perfect hair? Whilst struggling to take my make-up off on a Wednesday night, am I a bad person for telling my mum I've only had one drink when I've actually had 3 Pina Colada's & a vodka tonic? Am I a bad person for disliking some of the people I work with? I don't know, maybe?
Although on the flip side I recycle, I donate to charity monthly, invite the widow next door for regular cups of tea & let her borrow my cats when she's lonely. I also sign petitions to put an end to letting tourists ride elephants & always make sure my friends get home safely after a night out drinking.
I guess the bottom line is that we can all be shitty people at times. Jealousy can get the best of us at times, and we can say and do things to hurt others either on purpose or out of sheer ignorance. Personally, I'd like to think of myself as a decent person, somewhere in the middle of the nice people/bad people scale. Don't get me wrong, I can definitely adopt a couple more cats from an animal shelter, or try to be more understanding of people. And I should definitely at least try to cut down on the swearing.
What I'm saying is, I know I'm no Mother Theresa but I'm not trying to be the next Charles Manson either so I think I'm doing ok for now.
0 comments:
Post a Comment