Why do decent people seem too nice for me?

I was thinking yesterday that I could produce a book called 101 things that I beat myself up about! It’s a humorous take on the things I call upon in order to self-flagellate and the final question would be: what would life be like if I didn’t hate myself so much? I have this utopian image of someone who is the perfect daughter, friend, fiancé, colleague and can whip up a lemon drizzle cake, whilst starch-ironing a shirt and painting the kitchen. I know, I know it’s not even worth contemplating, because truth be told, I wouldn’t much like that Ilona.

She would be so damn ideal, so bloody kind and so utterly unreal that I would dislike her. I wouldn’t be able to help myself. I think hate is far too strong a word but I would sneer at her and give thanks for the fact that I am not like that. Yet she is what I am striving to be, which makes the whole exercise into a cruel and deceptive vicious circle.

I have a wide array of friends ranging from the debauched and hedonistic right through to the puritanical, teetotal and vegan! I suppose that over the years I have mainly identified with the former, whilst admiring and respecting the latter. In a sense that balance has shifted and whilst I won’t suddenly be ditching my party-loving, alcohol-sodden chums, I find myself increasingly with more to share with the more ‘model citizens’ in my circle!

Dear friends aside, however, I never really envisaged myself being more in touch with ‘do-gooders’ (as my mother would call them) than hell-raisers. I prided myself on the fact that I was open to all things sex, drugs and rock and roll. Even though I have always indulged on the fringes of the drugs scene and wasn’t known for doing anything life-threatening per se, I liked anything with an element of risk which meant I was neither scared of it nor did I disapprove. I felt proud of this fearlessness and pitied the folks who played it safe.

In truth, I admired these paragons of virtue but I didn’t aspire to be like them. Nor, in some ways, did I like them for their willpower, determination and fundamental goodness. It was like enjoying broccoli because it’s good for you. I just can’t get out of my head that NO-ONE is that perfect and that anyone that comes across as sincere and decent must be hiding something. This flies in the face of the fact that I personally try not to sin or be deliberately bad, yet I can not conceive that other people have the same values and they, unlike me, adhere strictly to them. In a way what I am railing against is the fact that they uphold all these values and enjoy being good, rather than trying to be good and failing, like me. I hate being faced with what I could be, if I weren’t so slovenly and lazy and lacking in willpower, so rather than have to deal with that I end up disliking such folk.

On Sunday I was doing housework and could hear the Residents Association Meeting going on in the garden next door. I revelled in that fact that they were having such dull conversations whilst drinking tea and admiring the flowers and told K I’d rather have pins stuck in my eyes than be forced to do that. As he pointed out, we’d have to let people in to our house whom we didn’t like and be polite to arseholes in the spirit of inclusiveness that exists within these groups. Oh how we laughed at such an unlikely prospect! Yet who am I to judge these folk? They are good and honest people with equally good intentions. They try to improve our community and create a pleasant and warm atmosphere in the neighbourhood. Anyone would think it was the local branch of the BNP that we were discussing with such venom, but it’s people who mean well that we shun and avoid like the plague, whilst finding folk like Jeremy Clarkson (hugely bigoted) and Frankie Boyle (black to the point of evil) rather amusing.

All that said, maybe it’s to do with the realisation that these good people have feet of clay, as has been exposed over the last few decades. No longer is the parish priest revered, the local MP feted nor the school teachers respected. Every scandal wears away at my belief that these pillars of the community are true to their cause. Many have been shown up as deceitful, whilst others have been uncovered as carrying out criminal acts. Instead of thinking how wonderful these folk are for sacrificing elements of their life for better things, all I wonder is what really goes on behind closed doors that they aren’t telling us about. I am a cynic (with good reason) who can’t help asking myself whether or not anyone or anything is as it seems. Not much help when you want to strive to be better if you think everyone else is hiding something!