To All My Fellow Chidis

The Good Place is one of my favorite shows of all time. And an all time favorite character (Chidi) played by William Jackson Harper irritatingly reminds me of myself. Here’s one of my favorite dialogues from this corny, beloved show.

Chidi: Well, uh... there's something you don't know about me. I read an article saying that growing almonds was bad for the environment, and yet I continued to use almond milk in my coffee...
Michael: No, dingus! You hurt everyone in your life with your rigidity and your indecisiveness.
Chidi: Oh, fork! You're right. Every friend, every girlfriend was driven nuts because I couldn't do anything. I missed my mom's back surgery because I had already promised my landlord's nephew that I would help him figure out his new phone. I made everyone miserable.

Indecisiveness has been my curse throughout every course of my life.

Everything is a moral quandary for me. Every day is a pursuit to get free.

The shackles of anxiety on a person whose mind floats toward the philosophical and ethical are near impossible to break.

This entanglement of moral questions and anxiety has affected me in all the ways you would pray to pass by your kids. At a young age, I noticed that I tensed up around unreflective assertiveness, but I felt that to functionally survive this world, I needed to toss all that inhibited me from telling the truth and living freely, leading me to be less anxious and more decisive.

Because the world is so complicated and our stories are so diverse, my brief residence in the house of decisiveness came to an end by an eviction notice plastered on the door of moral dilemmas.

There is a scene in The Good Place where Chidi has a near-death experience (well… it’s actually the way he died until season 3 decided to… well, you’ll have to watch it) and suddenly has a clarity that instills in him a happiness he realizes he’s never had. He preaches this gospel of decisiveness to a friend of his who noticed that he bought a blueberry muffin in less than an hour, prompting Chidi to share how easy it is to just stuff our incessant worries away and do what we feel like is the best next move for ourselves. As has happened to me many times, Chidi was flung back to his existence of constant stomachaches for not knowing if he was constantly and unwittingly committing unethical acts.

What did him in? The friend to whom he had told to throw all caution to the wind got hospitalized for working out in response to Chidi’s evangelistic plea to name a desire and go after it. The friend’s desire was to get healthier and to go to the gym, so Chidi told him all he had to do was decide.

Both of bro’s legs were busted up, dislocated, and bent in the opposite direction of its design. To cheer him up, Chidi brought him blueberry muffins to cheer him up, only to be met with the exhortation of the nurse in the room to boycott those muffins because the blueberry planters were exploited migrants.

This jettisoned all of Chidi’s progress in writing a thesis he cared about and growing out of his obsession with doing and getting everything right.

I’m Chidi. And, I worry that I always will be. Though… there are parts about that for which I’m grateful.

When you catch a vision of a world and a way of being that is compelling but feels impossible because of how screwed up the world has become—the show comedically demonstrates how we can unwittingly be supporting abberant and unjust industries via buying tomatoes and things alike—it’s easy to despair.

When you can’t score peace with yourself and can’t forgive yourself for not getting it right every day, your deep reflection may be a resistance to your limitations. Anxiety sets in. Our friends worry. Our loved ones want to throw us a lifejacket but we’re too adrift in existential crises.

I’ve been trying to not moralize things that are neutral or that don’t have exclusively, singular routes. Embracing mystery is a process for me, and I’ve been trying to follow God there.

I feel deeply when I see Chidi try to save himself out of a bind by recalling Aristotlean paragraphs and deontological arguments to organize himself around something worthwhile; when I watch him try to persuade himself into joy when he’s impossibly bound to self-ruin through helping others who are taking advantage of him, I cringe and laugh as I see myself.

While pondering my Chidi-ness, the famous invitation of Jesus to “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” sits with me. To my fellow Chidis out there, I don’t know what to say except you’re freedom can come. You may never feel at home being assertive, but you can be at rest accepting that the whole world ain’t in your hands. It’s a hard pill to swallow when you learn your indecisiveness, however well-intentioned and desirous of truly helping others, can hurt people. But Jesus can carry that. In fact Jesus wants too. He has space for those of us whom find it difficult to navigate our anxiety and indecisiveness. Perhaps that space is what we need to discover a new way of being that brings us joy and peace.

Luh y’all big time,

Ru.