I have never believed that any human being was just good or bad. He has and always will be, to me, both. At times, he can be good. Others, bad. He drifts from one to the other based on how he reacts to certain situations. Take Will Smith, for example. Everyone saw him as a “good guy” but then he goes up on stage during the Oscars and slaps Chris Rock. Now, people think the worst of him, and that “good guy” persona was just fiction for the masses. Hollywood glimmer.

Is he good or bad then? I say both. We don’t have to psycho-analyze him to get to that conclusion. Everyone is both good and evil. Even the worst of us can do good. I am sure that for all the horrors that someone like Hitler, Stalin and even Marcos have done, there are those that can, and will say that he was helped by that man, or that the man had been good to him. We are both at the same time. Always.

This is why we struggle through life making decisions every day. We generally just don’t give up and say “well, I’m bad anyway, so I might as well go crazy!” At the same time, imagine yourself eternally trying to be good all the time. It’s exhausting, and the consequences of getting caught doing bad is terrible. Take Ellen DeGeneris for example. She had that “good image” going until the horror stories about how she treated guests and, worse, staff got out. People came out with varying stories: she was good to me; she treated me terribly. Same person. She even made a joke about it how she couldn’t even have a car horn because if someone rudely cuts her in traffic and blasts her horn; people will look and say “Ellen?”

In the end, of course, we know we have to do good and avoid evil. That’s the Catholic thing to do, and I am Catholic: born and raised. But the struggle is real. This is the reason why we invoke the Holy Spirit to come into our lives and lead us because doing good constantly every single day and night is exhausting and we cannot do it without help. Sure, even with constant prayer, we slip and fall but we also get up and carry on. Seeking forgiveness, confessing our shortcomings, and doing penance to keep doing good. That’s it really: don’t be good, do good. Every single day.

My Easter reflection this year.