When Being Good Is Hard

When Being Good Is Hard

There’s a before and after. Before, I believed being good was a fixed point on a map—clear, unchanging, and demanded of others with quiet certainty. I’d lecture about integrity like it was a fixed point on a map, forgetting that most of us are navigating fog. My students’ moral failures felt like personal indictments. I’d sigh when someone cut a line, or skipped a class, or lied to a friend. How could they not see the right path? I thought. I’d even judged my own son for choosing a less prestigious job, convinced his path wasn’t “good enough.”

Then came Maria, a quiet sophomore who’d plagiarized a paper. I’d caught her, and she sat in my office, tears tracing paths through her makeup. “I just need to pass this class to help my mom,” she whispered, voice cracking. “She’s sick. I can’t afford to fail.” I’d been ready with a lecture on academic honesty, but her words hit like a physical thing. The rigid line I’d drawn between “good” and “bad” dissolved in that moment. I saw not a cheater, but a daughter drowning in a crisis I’d never considered.

The philosophers called this moral particularity—the idea that ethics isn’t about abstract rules, but the messy, specific weight of a single life. But what does that actually mean for how we live? It means the “good” I’d demanded was a luxury I could afford. It meant I’d been judging people from the safety of my own untested privilege. That day, I didn’t just forgive Maria’s mistake—I asked her what she needed. We found a way for her to rewrite the paper with extra support. She passed. Her mom got the help she needed.

What shifted wasn’t just my view of Maria. It was my entire compass. I stopped seeing “good” as a destination and started seeing it as a daily practice—small, imperfect, and deeply human. Now, when I see someone struggling to do right, I don’t ask, “Why aren’t they good?” I ask, “What’s making this hard for them?” I’ve learned that being good isn’t about never falling; it’s about who you choose to be when you’re on your knees. It’s mending a torn shirt instead of demanding a new one. It’s realizing that the hardest part of being good isn’t the act itself—it’s seeing the person who needs to do it, and choosing to help them find their way, one shaky step at a time.

— Ray Bates, still asking questions