The Cost of Being “Good”

The biggest thing I learned last year was to stop letting people waste my time. I no longer stay on the phone for more than five minutes if the conversation is not important. No casual talk. Not because I hate people, but because time is not neutral. Time is life.

I will not confuse availability with virtue. My attention is not public property.

As selfish as it may sound, this decision forced me to confront something uncomfortable. Much of what we call goodness is performative, and often self-inflicting. You can never do enough. There is always someone who needs more, wants more, expects more. At some point, I confused kindness with obligation.

Kindness that costs my integrity is not kindness.

Somewhere along the way, I equated not being kind with moral failure. With hell. With being a bad person. So I did things I was not supposed to be doing. I stayed when I should have left. I listened when I was depleted. I softened truth to preserve comfort. Not because it was right, but because I was afraid of what honesty would cost me socially and spiritually.

Silence that protects comfort but wounds me is not peace.

Choosing other people’s feelings over honesty does not create harmony. It creates damage, just delayed and redirected inward. Each moment of restraint becomes resentment. Each forced kindness becomes self-betrayal.

I will tell the truth without cruelty. I will set boundaries without apology.

I am not Jesus. I do not think I can, or want to, die for anyone, especially people who do not appreciate me. That realization used to feel shameful. Now it feels accurate.

I am not here to perform goodness. I am here to live honestly.

The Bible says to love your enemies. It does not say to love them more than yourself. It does not say to abandon discernment, boundaries, or truth. Love does not require access. Love does not require lying. Love does not require destruction.

Loving others does not require self-destruction. Faith does not demand that I disappear.

There is tension in holding all of this at once, faith, honesty, kindness, and self-respect. I do not resolve it neatly. I sit with it. I pray about it. I talk to God about where love ends and self-erasure begins.

What I know now is simple. Boundaries are not cruelty. Honesty is not violence. And being good should not cost you yourself.