JER: “The Good Egg” by Jory John and Pete Oswald

JER: “The Good Egg” by Jory John and Pete Oswald is a follow-up to their previous book: “The Bad Seed”.  When I realized they had made a "sequel", I couldn't help getting a bit nervous.  I loved "The Bad Seed" so much, I didn't want a lackluster follow-up to taint my high opinion of the original book.  But thankfully, I wasn't disappointed, and they complement each other well.

What I love about both of these books is that the authors play around with the concept of being “GOOD” or “BAD”. When I started telling Mallory about “The Bad Seed”, she became concerned that she might not agree with what the book judged to be “BAD”. After all, history is full examples of society perpetuating viewpoints, creating laws, and punishing people for ideas, theories, or activities they thought were “BAD”, only to have society later decide those ideas, theories, or activities aren't BAD, and in some cases public opinion completely reverses and a majority of people decide those things may actually be really GOOD.

For instance, at one point in Western Civilization, the idea that the Sun might be the center of the Solar System (i.e. the Heliocentric Model) instead of the Earth being the center of the Solar System (i.e. the Geocentric Model) was seen as really, really "BAD" since it conflicted with some interpretations of the Bible. On 12 April 1633, "Galileo was ordered to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun, which was deemed heretical by the Catholic Church". After a full trial, the Catholic Church handed down the following order on 22 June 1633:

“We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo… have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world.”

Not too long ago in American History, two people who loved each other and decided to get married could be thrown in jail and ordered to leave the State they were born in, raised in, and lived in . . . IF they happened to be of from two different races. This isn't theoretical, this is what happened in Loving v. Virginia.

"In 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia. The Lovings returned to Virginia shortly thereafter. The couple was then charged with violating the state's antimiscegenation statute, which banned inter-racial marriages. The Lovings were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail (the trial judge agreed to suspend the sentence if the Lovings would leave Virginia and not return for 25 years)."

Fortunately, the Supreme Court decided that the Virginia Law against interracial marriage was Unconstitutional:

In a unanimous decision, the Court held that distinctions drawn according to race were generally "odious to a free people" and were subject to "the most rigid scrutiny" under the Equal Protection Clause. The Virginia law, the Court found, had no legitimate purpose "independent of invidious racial discrimination." . . . "Under our Constitution," wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren, "the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State."

In that case, all of the Supreme Court Justices were able to agree that a law that prevented two consenting adults from choosing to enter into marriage based on their race was "odious to a free people", a ruling they were able to come to unanimously.  But not too long after this ruling, another case presented an issue that still leads to a lot of disagreements over what is "BAD" or "GOOD".  

On November 1, 1961, a gynecologist at the Yale School of Medicine, C. Lee Buxton, opened a birth control clinic in New Haven in conjunction with Estelle Griswold, who was the head of Planned Parenthood in Connecticut. On the same day that the clinic opened, they received its first ten patients and dozens of appointment requests from married women who wanted birth control advice and prescriptions. Griswold and Buxton were arrested, tried, found guilty, and fined $100 each based on a law from 1878 which "banned the use of any drug, medical device, or other instruments in furthering contraception.  Think about this for a moment.  At that time, this law would only be directed to married couples, since most states had separate laws against pre-marital sex, i.e. "fornication".  My home state (Utah) just repealed their "misdemeanor fornication" law (1970) this month with a 41-32 vote in March 2019.  So this law that specifically prevents two married adults, in the privacy of their homes, from choosing to use a birth control pill, a condom, or any other "instrument in further contraception", and it wasn't even a unanimous decision:

"In a 7-2 decision authored by Justice Douglas, the Court ruled that the Constitution did in fact protect the right of marital privacy against state restrictions on contraception. While the Court explained that the Constitution does not explicitly protect a general right to privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy. . . . The Connecticut statute conflicted with the exercise of this right and was therefore held null and void." 

That is a long-winded way of saying that the concept of what is "BAD" or "GOOD" has changed over time.  I love "The Bad Seed" because it confronts the idea of what is "BAD", maybe it isn't about what latitude your ancestors came from or what you do in the privacy of your own home.  Maybe what is really "BAD" is harming or being inconsiderate to your fellow humans.  Maybe that "BAD SEED" dealt with some trauma in their past, and they needed some time and compassion to work through it.  Only after they've worked through it could they choose to be happy and compassionate to other people.

"The Good Egg" and "The Bad Seed" both focus on personal development, but whereas the "bad seed" had to work through trauma from their past, the "good egg" allowed their personal expectations to influence the way they saw everyone else.

The "good egg's" heart is in the right place, and I can relate to this, I often project my expectations onto other people, and I end up trying to give other people what I would want, EVEN IF they don't want it.  I'll give an example, we had dinner recently, and Lake ordered a salad.  The salad dressing was in its nice neat cup to the side of the salad, and I figured "hey, if this were my salad, I'd want to pour the dressing on evenly" (I begin to pour the dressing onto the salad . . . but my deft circling motion is cut short by the anguished cries of Lake).  "NOOOOO, I didn't want the dressing ON THE SALAD!!!!".   I projected my expectations to disastrous results, Lake wasn't happy, and I can totally understand after I step back for a moment.  I wouldn't want someone else pouring salad dressing on my salad, but I slipped into "GOOD EGG".  I did the thing, when I should have let Lake do it herself.  Maybe she would have poured the dressing on the same way, with the same deft circling motions, maybe should would have put more or less on, maybe she wanted to delicately dip her salad in the dressing, I don't know.  But I should have given her the autonomy to choose for herself.

What I've learned over time, is that projecting my expectations onto other people not only leads me to make other people dissatisfied, it also ends up making me feel frustrated.  I could easily get upset at Lake for crying over salad dressing, when the whole point of salad dressing is to be poured over salad.  There is a reasonable argument for that line of thinking, but it will ultimately end with me being exhausted "taking care of other people, who don't EVEN APPRECIATE ME!!!"  See, it is really easy to slip into "GOOD EGG".

But for everyone's sake, I've learned that things go better when I take a moment for myself, when I "introvert" (hat/tip to Caroline Barna for the feedback) for a bit to get centered.

When I'm finally feeling like myself, then I can be the person that gives other people the space to be themselves.  As I read this book I kept thinking about one of my favorite lines, from one of my favorite books: "And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good" - John Steinbeck, "East of Eden".

I love "The Good Egg" because it reminds me that I don't need to hold an expectation for myself to be perfect, because no one is perfect, and we are all figuring out life together.