Just Bad Enough

They say the good die young.

Does this mean the bad will live a long, hearty life?  How bad must one be to live forever?

And what about the ugly?

I was thinking about this while patiently waiting at the dentist for a check-up.

Ten minutes earlier, an elderly Nicaraguan lady who was sitting next to me had pointed at my refreshingly cold water bottle.  I still struggle to understand Nicaraguan Spanish, but I gathered she wanted to know where I bought the water, and if the shop was close by?

My Spanish is still terrible, but sufficient, so I explained to her that the shop was just a few doors down.

It’s intensely hot here these days, especially in the concrete cities that we have to drive into when the week calls for more adulting and less beaching.

Grandmotherly and wrinkled in her countenance, the elderly woman continued to sit next to me in the heat, her long skirts folded around her. The temperature was too high for long skirts. I decided to just go buy a bottle of water for her.  Leaving the hot lobby, I stepped out into the hotter street –  certain I’d be back before the dentist called me to her chair.

As I returned with the cold water in hand, walking through the smothering heat, I thought what a kind thing it was that I did for this elderly woman.  Then, in my next steps, I wondered if I’d just shortened my life by a few days by doing something good.

It’s the opposite of karma, this kind of thinking, and I don’t know why it blossomed in my brain at that moment.  I don’t want to die young.  But the thought of any good deed cancelling out longevity was immediately followed by another thought. One that considered that maybe I needed to do a few more bad things in life if I was going to ensure I make it to my 100th birthday, which I’m determined to do.

My determination is mental, (you know, “thoughts become things”), but also physical, because even though I eat far too much pizza, I try to eat mostly healthy.  Clean foods, no sugar, my consumption of processed foods is minimal.  I exercise 4 – 5 times a week, lift weights, do yoga, and meditate. All the healthy things.

But still, for years, throwing weight at “the good die young” theory, I’ve wondered how much “bad” I need to sprinkle in my life so that I won’t get caught in the crosshairs of whoever it is that assassins the good.

Ideally, my childhood and teenage years would have carried the bulk of any bad behavior that could stretch out my time on this Earth this time around.  But . . . I’m pretty sure I’ve done plenty of bad things as an adult.  Probably some things even this week.

Doing bad things even unintentionally heats up my guilt, so I genuinely try to make good decisions and be kind to people. 

I believe most of us do.

A few days ago marked the anniversary of my stepdad’s unexpected death.  He is dearly missed, but as the years go by, the heartbroken and sad confusion of his passing feels less sharp.  Perhaps grief is a pain we become familiar with carrying, and it’s now easier to talk about him without falling apart.

He was just short of his 71st birthday when he died.  Young by my standards. Does this mean he was scooped up by The Good Die Young militia?  My stepdad was not a bad man, but he had done a handful of bad things for sure.  Some hilariously bad.

I guess it all comes down to how we define “good” and “bad”, and what we mean by “young”.

This is where my thoughts led me, as I waited patiently in the heat for my dentist appointment, sitting next to an old Nicaraguan lady. She, gratefully drinking her cold water, and I, lost in thought about the balance of good deeds and bad deeds in this crazy life and wondered how I was scoring so far on my journey to the age of 100.

And what about the ugly?

The elderly woman waiting with me was not ugly.  Nor was she young.  That kind of math must equate to a long list of dastardly deeds she’d committed throughout her life, but I didn’t have enough waiting time (nor Spanish) to ask for her thoughts or how close her age was to 100.

The dentist next called me to the back room, where an X-ray and a poke about my molars revealed the need for two small fillings.

I guess I need to take better care of my teeth.

And (since no one knows what happens to the ugly), I’ll keep trying to live mostly as a good person and behave badly only on occasion – just bad enough to be sure I reach my 100th birthday.