The fatigue of trying to be good

The fatigue of trying to be good

Vijay Gopichandran


As soon as I came home from work today, I sat near my mom and asked her, “When we were children did you always try to be your best self in front of us? How difficult was it to always be the perfect person?” My mother thought for a bit and then laughed. She said, “You are crazy. When we were parenting you, we never had time to think about all this.” But I don’t remember even one stray wrong action or a moment of weakness of my parents when I was growing up. I wondered how they managed such a façade of perfection.


I must describe the basis for this question. I am a teacher. I teach in a medical school. There are many kinds of students in my college and I have unique relationships with some of them. There are so many varieties of them – hardworking, sincere, lazy, happy-go-lucky, serious, superficial, intense, arrogant, introverted, gregarious, reserved and all the other types that are there. I strongly believe in certain core characteristics of a teacher.

·         A teacher should be good at the subject.

·         The teacher should be well prepared for each class.

·         A teacher should be a mentor – taking extra interest in the life of a student.

·         A teacher should not do anything that he/she doesn’t want his/her student to do. In other words, a teacher should be a role model. 

I role model my teaching on my own teacher Dr. K.P. Misra, who was all of this and more to me. Sometimes the conscious and earnest efforts of being this kind of a teacher is tiring. I am writing this blog to vent this fatigue in the hope that I can get over it and carry on doing the right thing.

I have some days when I wake up feeling low and tired. I feel like taking a break and not going to work. But on those days, I push myself by saying, “If I give in to these weak moments, how can I expect the students to be regular, sincere and hardworking?”. And I push myself to work. Those days, I feel intense fatigue of trying to be good. Later on, I realize that the students actually do not see me struggling to get up, putting up a brave face and pushing myself to work, so what have I actually achieved? Is that role modeling? And that thought worsens my fatigue. On other days, like today, for example, I feel seething anger on a student. It is probably something he/she said or did. After a few moments of thinking about it, I decide it is too trivial or probably unintended and I never express my anger. Not losing my temper seems to be the mature thing to do. The effort of this maturity tires me immensely.


I have found myself constantly checking the sentences I speak, and the things I say. The other day, a student questioned whether he had to necessarily travel a long distance to verify whether a digital device that we were planning to rent, was working. Without thinking I retorted, “If you are not willing to go, I will” and this hurt the student badly. To avoid such hurtful things, I keep checking every sentence that I speak and every word that I utter. It is painfully tiring to do this every time.

And today I reached my tipping point. I woke up this morning completely exhausted trying to be a ‘good teacher’. When I went to college, I couldn’t face the students. I was angry with them. They were the reason why I was tired. With the same fatigue, I came home and asked my mother the question that I asked. I have been boiling with some unexplained rage and sadness, a very disturbing mix of emotions. I shared it with a good friend. She said, “I go through this too. I think you need a break. Just take a break and then come back”. It was sane advice. But I am currently not able to take a break.


Of late, my biggest comfort and venting forum is this blog. It is my vomit bowl, punch bag, hold-all, and dump yard. I throw all my baggage here. When I am thrilled about something, I write it here. When I down in the dumps like today, I write it here. Mostly I just don’t care if anyone reads what I have written here. Also, the fact that the reader cannot show me an immediate reaction to my face, gives me comfort. When they appreciate what I write, it makes me happy. When they don’t, I assume whatever I want to and that is alright too.


I know I am not perfect. In fact, I know I have a lot of manufacturing defects. However hard I try to restrain my natural self and be my best self for my students, I know I cannot hide my deep-seated insecurities, imperfections, and inadequacies which will come out anyways. I am now also thinking that this ‘need to be my best self’ in front of the students emerges from my very fragile ego, which does not want to show me as anything less than perfect. So, maybe I should just let go of trying to be good.


Another important lesson I am learning from this fatigue is that in many ways my obsession with being good emerges from my deep-seated need to be approved, accepted and liked. I must understand that if I am to be approved, accepted and liked, it must be for the real me, and not for the pseudo-me which causes me so much fatigue. I need to stop wearing my ‘holier than thou’ hat from now and be myself. Maybe that will lift the burden and fatigue off my mind.


I am not sure if any of this makes any sense. I have started feeling better even as I finished writing this. I hope I can find peace in me soon. After all, I shouldn’t be spending too much time being something that I am not, at the same time ruining my own health and peace in the bargain.