What woman could obey her husband when children and neighbors are suffering?
This question sits at the center of a quiet conflict I’ve carried for years—a conflict between what I was taught to be, and what I can no longer ignore. For a long time, goodness meant obedience, self-sacrifice, and attention turned outward. It meant noticing everyone else before myself, solving problems, softening edges, making myself smaller so others could be comfortable.
And somewhere along the way, I began to wonder: what is being lost in that exchange?
At its most basic level, the word “selfish” simply means to be concerned with oneself. But over time, that definition has been transformed into something moral, something accusatory. To be “selfish” is now to be lacking, to be morally deficient, to be someone who chooses themselves over others in a way that is considered inherently wrong.
But what if that shift is not actually about morality?
What if it is about control?
For decades, I was taught—directly and indirectly—that my value came from how much I could give. As a child, I was handed baby dolls and told, without words, that my role would be to care. To nurture. To attend to others. By the time I reached adulthood, the expectation was already embedded: to be good meant to be useful.
But usefulness is not the same as worth.
And yet, somewhere along the way, the two became indistinguishable.
This is where the question deepens: what does it mean to fail morally? Is moral failure the breaking of a shared set of values? Or has it quietly become something else—something closer to not being useful enough?
Because in modern culture, especially under the weight of productivity-driven systems, “good” often begins to look like “productive.” The more you can produce, the more you can endure, the more you can contribute—the more valuable you appear. Rest becomes suspicious. Boundaries become inconvenient. And the self, the actual lived experience of being human, becomes something to manage rather than something to honor.
This is not accidental.
What we call productivity today carries the echoes of older belief systems—systems that tied discipline to morality, and suffering to virtue. Religious frameworks, particularly those influenced by Puritan thought, taught that restraint, labor, and control were signs of righteousness. In such a worldview, goodness is not just internal—it must be proven through action, through visible effort, through endurance.
But here lies the contradiction: these same traditions often asserted that all people were inherently valuable. That each person held worth before God. That value was not meant to be earned.
And yet, in practice, value became conditional.
It had to be demonstrated.
It had to be earned.
And once value must be proven, it can also be withdrawn.
This is where the danger begins to surface. Because when usefulness becomes the measure of worth, we begin to draw lines around who counts and who does not. Those who cannot produce—because of chronic illness, mental illness, disability, or simply the limits of the human body—are placed in a position where they are forced to justify their existence.
And if they cannot meet the standard, the implication is not that the standard is flawed—but that they are.
That is where morality becomes dangerous.
Historically, this logic has been pushed even further. When value is tied to productivity or “fitness,” it becomes easier to justify exclusion, hierarchy, and even harm. Ideas that began as moral frameworks can harden into systems that determine whose lives are worth supporting and whose are not. This is where the overlap between productivity, morality, and eugenic thinking becomes difficult to ignore.
When human worth is measured, it can be ranked.
And when it is ranked, it can be denied.
But if that is true, then the question returns to me, in a quieter, more personal way:
What happens when I can’t produce in the way I was taught to?
When illness slows me down. When my mind does not cooperate. When my body refuses to meet the expectations placed upon it.
What then?
For so long, the answer I absorbed was simple: try harder. Push through. Be better. Be more useful.
But that answer came at a cost.
Because when I could not meet those expectations, I did not just feel tired—I felt inadequate. Not just struggling—but failing. As though my inability to perform was evidence that I was somehow less.
This is the moment where the framework begins to crack.
Because if worth is tied to output, then rest becomes failure. And illness becomes moral weakness. And being human—finite, limited, vulnerable—becomes something to overcome rather than something to accept.
But what if that is not the truth?
What if worth is not something that must be proven through exhaustion?
What if being is enough, even when doing is limited?
The first time I began asking what I wanted—what I needed—what felt safe to me—it felt almost radical. After years of orienting myself toward others, turning inward felt unfamiliar, even uncomfortable. But it also felt necessary.
For the first time in a long time, I began to have a self.
Not a role. Not a function. Not a tool for others.
A self.
And that raises its own question:
If I am not defined by how much I give, then who am I?
Perhaps the answer is not something to be proven, but something to be allowed.
Because a system that requires me to abandon myself in order to be considered good is not a moral system—it is a system that depends on self-erasure.
And I am no longer certain that is something I am willing to call goodness.
If “selfish” once meant simply being concerned with oneself, then perhaps it is not a moral failing at all.
Perhaps it is the beginning of something essential—an awareness, a turning inward, a recognition that I exist as a person with needs, limits, and a body that cannot be endlessly spent.
For so long, I was taught that to be good meant to disappear.
But in learning to listen to myself, I have not become worse.
I have become real.
To be in tune with oneself is not to reject others—it is to finally exist alongside them, rather than only in service to them.
