goodness/you in this light

How do you measure goodness?

On the fridge, a bag of very, very tiny measuring spoons hang in a plastic bag pinned against the chalky white texture of the door via a circular magnet. The spoons are so small that they look like straws. Even smaller. It's a wonder how such a thing could hold or carry anything.

How do you measure goodness?

Worth is innately tied to our work. If you don't work, you aren't deserving. This is a mantra, the mantra, what we are couched in from day one. Help those who will help themselves. How can someone love you if you don't love yourself. It absolves us of all collective badness. You are your own person. This community is not mine.

How do you measure goodness?

Find someone you trust and, as a social experiment someday, ask them to define "work." In my experience, you will soon have someone tripping over their own conditional statements. Work is often the job, that is the first start, it's what we have to do to survive. Most people will start to expand - housework is work (with many caveats, usually from men), but before you know it, there becomes a breakdown. Homework is necessary, not work. It is not "labor hours." But then labor hours are just our job, and our house, our hygiene, these are not our job in a strict sense, but they can be. You can get turned away from a job interview because your clothes are too wrinkled, your hair not combed, your fingernails dirty. And before you know it, the common argument - the common attempt to define work -- breaks down. Writing is work if it's for your job, if you receive money for it, but outside of work? It is a hobby. It is a creative outlet. The nature of the work is not changed in any material way. Housework isn't real work. Homework isn't real work. Flossing your teeth every day isn't real work. Before you know it, the stay at home mom doesn't do any work. She has no goodness. She is not worthy.

How do you measure goodness?

A man comes out of a haircut with a new hairdresser drenched in sweat and nervous to have suggested a change. For years it was the same haircut, at the same person, disappointed each time with the results but knowing that hair would grow back. The new haircut was better. There are changes, ideas, but the man felt better coming out, minus the shirt now feeling like it had been dipped in a tub. Discomfort revisited and overcome. The only reason he went was because his fiancée was there with him, a guide, a comfort in a sphere considered so anxious the man would have not done it without her. Some light. It was such a small thing made big by anxiety, by fears, by a brain sometimes out of control, careening down the tracks. Someone was there to help it along.

How do you measure goodness?

Most billionaires have given money to charity, many of them large amount. As a percentage of their wealth though, they give very little. And as they run roughshed over the environment and labor, people debate if they have bought enough credit to do so. The donations pay for the badness. The capital revenues are work, so they are worthy. Work has been defined. Goodness has been measured in dollars. The stay at home mom is not worthy, again.

How do you measure goodness?

My parents defined goodness as a 4.0 with no exceptions, as good performance in sports with no exceptions. Anything less was badness, was a flaw needing to be yelled out, scrubbed out, like the cleanliness we were coached on from day one of our existence as kids (me and my sister). We were a simulacrum, or an attempt at one. Because it all made sense, we've all heard it. Good grades, good job, now worthy. Goodness attained.

How do you measure goodness?

We can't define work, we can't define worth, we can't measure goodness. The spoons are too small for me to handle. Try as I might, the powder escapes. Try as I might, I can't estimate the creek in the park. Try as I might, I can't measure the time I have spent measuring the time I have spent. We know bad when we see it, we toss and turn over consumption and friendship. Goodbye to John, he dropped the n word. Goodbye to Chris, he was a bully.

How do you measure goodness?

There is very little I, personally, have contributed to this world. I have not, alas, made a billion dollar donation, canvassed for people's rights, or dedicated my entire life to the soul pursuit of ethical goodness after I lost 3 years of sleep over agonizing about a friend's tacky boots.

How do you measure goodness?

Perhaps I fit inside the spoon. Perhaps the people who try their hardest to be there for me are the goodness, and that's all I can offer myself. Perhaps that's good enough, for me, for them, for all of us. Perhaps it's not. In the time you were reading this, someone overdosed and died. Someone died in a war. What goodness was available is now lost.

How do you measure goodness?

I skim this post and roll my eyes, mostly. I'm not fond of much of my writing, but this feels, unambiguously, like my high school self in a way. Vacuous and poorly formed. Not enough distance, not enough deference to elaborate sentence schemes and self-deprecation. Nothing really intelligent or revelatory or noteworthy. Killer Mike said prepare to be average. Can that be measured? It is my first post in over a month. I can not measure any goodness here. Just a void.

How do you measure goodness?

The spoons hang still on the fridge. A small webpage on a college website updates my total accumulated credit hours by 4. A check arrives in the mail connotating a reimbursement of taxes paid. The worth is unambiguous. I have no idea what it means.

-End