Obsessed With the Smooth Life

I wasn't allowed to walk backwards as a kid. The reason my mom gave me was because "that's how the devil walks".

When I was little I was taught that if you were good, went to school, did your homework, treated everyone how you wanted to be treated everything would work out.

Nobody sat me down and explained what all of this was for. They didn't have to. Baby Jonathan understood:

If I am good, I will be loved, my needs will be met, and I will get a life without problems.

That was the deal. I never said it out loud. I don't think I could have. But I think many of us secretly believe this idea under the concept of "karma".

The Terms

Here's what I want you to understand about that deal: I held up my end.

I was top of my grades. Not good — top. I was polite to adults. I did the homework before the fun. I was the kid teachers described as "a pleasure to have in class".

Then my parents split.

My mother couldn't cover rent on her own, so my sister, my mother and I moved into a room in my aunt's apartment in the Bronx. Three people, one room.

My father was a violent and abusive man, so I was happy he was no longer around. The grades, the manners, being respectable. It was never enough for him.

I was angry for a long time. I'd look around at school and think, why did we have to suffer when there are so many boys out there with fathers who love them? What did they do that I didn't?

There's no answer to that question. It took me years to stop looking for one.

The Language

I found the language for this much later, in No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover. He calls it a covert contract — an agreement you make without ever telling the other party, and then hold them to anyway.

"If I am a good boy, do my homework, and treat people right, the universe will owe me a problem-free life."

The universe never agreed to this.

That's what makes it a trap instead of a strategy. If being good earns a smooth life, then a rough life means you weren't good enough. So you try harder at the thing that isn't working. Every disappointment becomes evidence you need more of the same.

Glover calls it an ineffective survival mechanism. As a kid, it was a survival mechanism, and a reasonable one — when you have no control over anything, believing the world is fair is the closest thing to safety available.

Reality doesn't work that way. Shit happens. People let you down. Doors close with nobody behind them. Opportunities pass you that you won't find out about until years later, if ever. None of it is a response to how you've behaved.

What Changed

Eventually I realized, I liked school. Not the grades — actually learning about different subjects and overcoming challenges. I liked knowing things. And I wanted respect, so I respected other people, because that's how respect works.

I realized I needed to do those things for myself.

That's the whole shift. My behavior didn't change at all. Same kid, same report card, same manners. What changed was who it was for.

You don't get to negotiate with reality. Nobody is keeping count of how good you've been.

But you do get to decide who you are inside a life you didn't "choose". That part was always yours.