Good Guys

9 Marbles
There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good
She was very, very good
And when she was bad she was horrid.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    I recently listened to an interview with David Letterman where he described how he used to think of himself as a good guy yet he would do things that were inconsistent with being a good guy. I couldn’t help thinking about Ex-man. He was always so active in portraying himself with a good guy image. The reality was that he, like all of us, was not always “good.”
    My mother used to sing me the above rhyme when I was misbehaving. That was back in the day when you were either a good girl or a bad girl and the determination of your place on the spectrum was designated by someone outside of yourself. Yet as Ernest Hemingway wrote, “I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.” The good or bad feeling isn’t about who you are but what you’ve done. Thus it’s always a choice about how to act - in ways that express our highest good or those that do not. 
    Through Letterman I was able to realize that if we are stuck in an image, we can’t accept all of who we are. When someone is unable to accept his/her own foibles it generally follows that he/she is less able to accept the foibles of others.  Ex-man often judged my imperfections harshly (which coincided nicely with my shadow belief that I couldn’t be loved unless I was perfect or at least, not broken). And, yes, this is me not accepting his foible of needing to be seen as a good guy. Perhaps when I let go of my judgment of him, I'll be able to see more clearly those times when he does act from his highest good.

Are you invested in portraying an image to the world? If the front of your house has a beautiful facade but the back is falling apart, what’s the point of the facade? As Ben Franklin said, “What you would seem to be, be really.”
What would it take to accept all of ourselves? What would it take to find a partner that could do the same?