“THE HUG” by Michele Meister

When someone has been mean to you—asks Jeanne DuPray in The People of Sparks—why would you want to be good to them? You wouldn’t want to. That’s what makes it hard.

Evil, as repulsive as the word may seem to you—consciously or subconsciously—is easy. It takes a slip of the tongue, a shrug of the shoulder, a temporary or permanent numbing of the mind, and it just happens, just as good just… “happens.” You can become evil, a wise man once told me, in the bat of an eyelid. It’s a 180-degree swerve that’s as simple as pivoting on your toes. The difficulty, he told me, is in being good. That’s far harder than being bad.

And is it? It is. Because goodness isn’t a virtue in and of itself. Maya Angelou once stated that courage is the most important of all virtues—because without courage, you cannot give room for any other virtue to raise its head and survive. Goodness needs plenty of courage—courage to stand up against the badness, courage to acknowledge inevitable mistakes, courage to stand still and tall while cruelty, injustice, and ignorance are whipping you so that the blood drips from your skin onto your shoes. Is it worth it? You tell me.

There can be no goodness without courage, and no judgment can speakout without bravery as its trumpet.

That’s why being good is hard, I believe. Much harder than being bad.

~Angreek87