Am I Good?
Photograph by Alex Rodriguez
I want to express, right now. But I don’t need to express. I don’t have to express. I can take time; an incubation period, the opportunity for marination. There is an urgency to say what I want to say. And yet that urgency doesn’t necessarily translate to faster thinking, quicker reflection, immediate articulation. It just doesn’t happen. I simply can’t seem to process information as rapidly, I can’t seem to make sense of it all.
A beginning, middle, end, a cause and effect, evidence to justify, research to back up, quotations to strengthen, videos to highlight. If I have none of these, then what does my expression become? Does it lose integrity, does it lose perspective, does it become too subjective, does it become too narrow? Must it be part of a narrative? Must it tell a story? Must it be rooted in the present?
And who am I expressing to? 347 followers on Instagram. I pretend as though I am expressing to the world. I am not. Only to 347 followers. I speak as though I am addressing people who have some drastically different social and political experience to my own. No. Only 347 followers who very rarely will express something which turns my own experience upon its head.
It seems to me that I have the same experience as everyone. We are populating each other’s feed with the same tweets, the same news, the same perspectives, the same memes, the same jokes, the same wisdom, the same self-care tips. For all the hyper-individualism that we are purported to tend towards, we seem undeniably the same. Tribal. How could we be different if we express the same things to the same group of people over and over again, eliciting the same responses.
Or is it this medium that makes us all the same. That makes us appeal to the lowest common denominator. Acceptable to all. Risking nothing. Striving to be “good” so that if history were to find no other record of me but my Instagram profile, then at least I will be remembered as “good”.
Anxious, depressed, horrified, traumatized, guilty, imperfect, lazy, BUT always “good”. In expressing my flaws I become “good”. In expressing my limitations, I become “good”. In expressing my pain and anger, I become “good”. In expressing my solidarity I become “good”. How is that possible? How has goodness become such an easily accessible personality trait?
Expression itself has come to have a moral and commercial value. And so I hold my tongue, bite my lip, watch what I say, because my expression is not for myself. It is for others. I hold up my expression to them, begging for it to be bought. But why should someone buy my expression? And even if they do, what do I have to be proud of?
My expression consists of a language and vocabulary that is propagated and understood by a very exclusive group of people. And so if my expression is only circulated within this exclusive group and their kin, then what does the purpose of my expression become? Is it to simply develop a vocabulary and keep repeating it until the point of banality.
Why don’t I see this? Naturally, I do not want my expression to lead to dialogue. I want my expression to lead to agreement. For it to elicit responses in the vein of “THIS”, “Yes”, “Yaaasss”, “Truth”. Why? Because my expression has become closely linked to my productivity. God forbid that anyone think that I am socially or politically inactive; lazy, unthinking, out of touch.
I need to do my share of “goodness”. Doing good- can productivity and altruism co-exist? And if my productivity is on display, doesn’t doing good become a chore? Another piece of work that I need to accomplish in order to stay a member of my social group. Isn’t eight hours of work enough? I would love for there to be a God just so I can be told that I am not a good person. So I realize that it takes more than just a vocabulary to be good.
