Does Being a Good Person Make You Happy?

TNG is taking a much needed break from Dec 19-Jan 4. TNG will return with new content on Jan 5. Until then, please enjoy this post from the past year. Original publish date: 5/1//2008.

Last night, I got into a brief but loaded debate with my boyfriend and his roommate. The nature of the question, as you may have guessed from this post's title, was whether or not doing the right thing, being a good person or treating others as you would like to be treated actually leads to personal happiness. The convenient answer to this question is yes, that good deeds given lead to good deeds received and that you'll reap just what you sow.

My boyfriend believes this. His roommate and I do not. A character in "Six Feet Under" once admonishes another by saying "If you think life is like a vending machine where you put in virtue and take out happiness you're going to be disappointed." I agree. Call me self-righteous or call me boring, but I'm someone who has usually tried to do the right thing and rarely feel that I'm enjoying a better life than the liars, cheaters and philanderers who don't.

So now I'm asking myself the question that every homo has to reconcile before they truly enter an adult life: What's the point of being good?

I'll first admit that I'm no saint. I've been faced with a number of situations where I could've taken the moral, sexual or humanitarian high road and didn't. As much as I can try and justify some actions from my past, I have definitely hurt people who didn't deserve it and have built up my own share of well-deserved rancor. And believe me — I've gotten dicked around too. (So much so that I still reflexively cut my losses at the first sign of disrespect from a potential partner.) This was all before I was 21, and in a relatively hermetic college setting. But I moved to DC and discovered that all gay men, of any age, still acted like the blindly horny 14 year-olds they never got a chance to be.

I, however, tried to take the high road and denied myself a lot of pleasure in doing so. I have turned down a criminal amount of ass because I had myself convinced that good people don't go home with guys they've just met, or meet tricks online or fuck someone when they've just started dating someone else. Luckily I'm now aware that this is mostly bullshit, that the only person who would judge me for having an adult sex life was, in fact, me. Not that I've done most of those things that I formerly eschewed (my awesome boyfriend wouldn't like that) but I'm confident that I would if I were single.

But even within the confines of liberated queer spirituality, there is a right thing to do in most situations and a combination of alcohol and dick-hunger preclude most men from doing it. We (and I) fuck guys with boyfriends, or roommates of our exes or people that are probably juuuust a little too drunk to know what they're getting into.

And I usually pride myself on being a good guy. Assholery aside, I hold doors and do unto others and try to make people feel good about themselves. For this, I frequently am told that I'm one of the nicest guys people know, or even the only truly nice guy in DC. This is depressing. I can't believe that my expressions of basic human decency are greeted with the appreciation of a starving man stumbling across a sandwich.

So to keep up with others' perception of me, I took further and further pains to avoid treating other men in the shabby way that I had so often been treated. And what happened? I was happy in the short run — it was cool to have guilt-free Sunday mornings and not spend all my time worrying if someone (or everyone) hates me — but that feeling soon subsided. I actually took a look around me and felt that I was the only one doing this. And why should I be bored and self-righteous when everyone around me wasn't giving a shit for anyone else's feelings (or their own) and having all the more fun for it?

Looking back, I actually regret most of the times I sacrificed a fun night for the sake of doing the right thing. All I have to show for it are missed chances and a dulled smugness. Other people's feelings are still too important for me to really go out there and live the life of a sinner, but I feel that those who actually do what they want, when they want to, are the ones who don't lie awake at night wondering if there's a point to being good.