What Makes a Person Good?

The other day  a cohort member of mine asked me what I did this summer.  I told her I had been volunteering at my previous internship helping them with basic administrative stuff.  I mentioned that the summer had been busier than I'd anticipated but that was okay because I like keeping busy.  She turned to look at me and said, "Well, you're a saint. I guess that means you have to keep being a saint."  I wasn't sure how to take that comment.

I'm never very happy when someone calls me a saint or says that I'm a good person.  I don't feel like I'm a saint because in my mind saints are people who do amazing things that few people have the capacity or courage to do.  Helping out a non-profit agency with a little filing two days a week isn't something that takes tremendous capacity or courage.  It's simple.  Almost anyone could do it.

Research has said that altruism doesn't really exist.  No one does anything without some form of selfishness involved.  At the most basic level, people tend to assume that people do nice things because it makes them feel good.  I started doing a personal inventory about the things I do to help people and why I do them.  I also started thinking about what makes a good person from my point of view.

The truth is, when I help someone it's usually because whatever they're asking for isn't asking a lot of me.  It's easy to give a few days to a struggling non-profit when I don't have anything else on my schedule.  It's easy to sit down with someone and help them hammer out their research question so they can get started on their thesis.  Usually, in helping people, what I give is much smaller than what they seem to receive.  In fact, it seems so small that I don't really think much about it.  I mean really, is it that hard to give someone 20 minutes of your time to help them with something that seems incredibly difficult, or that they can't do because they're too busy with other work? I'm not really doing that much here.

The question about what makes a good person in my point of view was interesting for me to answer.  Lots of people do good things and often we hear something about that person, if they're media relevant, that makes us think that maybe they weren't such good people after all.  So it's not the doing that necessarily makes someone a good person.  Doing something good or helpful is easy and, really, anyone could do it.  So I don't feel that helping someone with something is necessarily what qualifies someone as being good.  What I really think qualifies someone as being good is a combination between what they do and what they don't do.

Good people do helpful things for people, but generally that's because they don't think of themselves as too important to do certain tasks or too important to give someone else their time.
Good people say nice things to people, but they also don't say hurtful things when they have the opportunity and they value other people's feelings enough to treat them kindly and without judgment.
Good people aren't pathologically selfish; they're selfish in a healthy way so that they are taken care of and able to do what is meaningful or natural to them.
Good people live in accordance with their deepest values, they don't allow other people to set or determine their goals and values, so they move through the world with a high level of integrity and contentment giving them the energy to give something to others.
Good people don't live as victims crying out at an unjust world, they take responsibility for the consequences of their actions and they accept them with grace and dignity.
Good people do their interpersonal work, enough to have some understanding that we are all connected and we need to support each other and they do not blame their hurt and pain on others.
Good people acknowledge that they have received help or instruction many times in their lives without which they wouldn't be the people they are today and, therefore, they are motivated to give back because they don't hoard knowledge or help like it's going to disappear tomorrow and they understand the value of passing on information.
Good people are honest, most ruthlessly with themselves and more gently with others.  They don't feel there is benefit in avoiding a truth, they just know how to say it or view it kindly.

So that's my list of what makes up a good person.  If you do more than that then you're probably a hero or a saint.  I don't know what makes a saint, but I do know what makes up a good person and I feel that I qualify for that.  The one thing that has run through my mind since that conversation is that in the eyes of God, every saint is a sinner too.