My Friend Told Me I Reminded Them of Chidi, I Guess They’re Right.
Huge warning before you read this piece: this piece is probably going to contain several spoilers and story threads from NBC’s Hit TV Show “The Good Place”. For the love of everything good, if you haven’t finished (or worse, started) watching the show, please go and finish season 1 to 4. It’s such a masterpiece.
Why and Who is Chidi?
In case you haven’t watched the show, I bet you’re wondering: Who’s Chidi? What’s he like? Why does the friend that you explicitly mention on the title say that the character reminds them of you?
Okay, so I’ll just give a very fast description of who Chidi is. Chidi, played by the brilliant William Jackson Harper, is a main character of The Good Place, he was born in Nigeria (yet raised in Senegal). He grew up to become a professor of Moral Ethics and ended up teaching in universities worldwide (France and Australia among them). He eventually died and went to “The Good Place” (it’s basically an afterlife).
Here is where we are gonna really-really spoiler-y: in the end of season one, we found out that Chidi and the gang didn’t actually went to “The Good Place”, they were actually in “The Bad Place” all these time. This twist would be very important in the long run, so just keep it in your mind for now.
So (maybe, just maybe) a question that lingers in the mind of some of you is: How did Chidi get put into the Bad Place in the very first place? He’s a Moral Ethics professor, he’s supposed to be very morally astute, right?
Well, yes, but no.
You see, you’re right thinking that Chidi is very morally astute. The problem is, he is too morally astute. So bad that a trait of Chidi is that he’s indecisive. Very indecisive. He ponders a lot in regards to everything that he does, making everything into a moral dilemma that has to be thought over and over and over again. Does doing A constitute as being more moral than doing B? Should he take a more deontological or a utilitarian framework in his decision-making? All that. His indecisiveness tortures everyone around him, and his rigidity to a strict (yet probably unnecessary) moral compass and considerations acts as a burden to him and his surroundings.
But why does this correlate to me?
To be honest, I don’t know. I’m not a master of Moral Ethics (I’m barely a morally-sound person) and I’m not smart enough to be a professor (yet, lol). So I guess my correlation to Chidi is the latest of the three: I’m indecisive as hell.
Why So?
Before this article would start to become more narcissistic, I’ll just portray how indecisive Chidi is through this one very simple quote:
Chidi: I am absolutely paralyzed by decision making and it is destroying my life. [S3 E1]
I think it’s quite self-explanatory, Chidi’s horrible at decision making. He doesn’t know when to say yes, he doesn’t know if he should say no.
And I am (hopefully, was) just quite a lot like him.
I’m an indecisive person, have always been since day one. I was a very timid kid. I have tons of anxiety pulling me down, especially when I entered high school. I second guess a lot, hated taking chances, hated going out.
I’d rather stay at home, where everything’s predictable, where everything seems okay. Dealing with people is hard, it was always a drag, I could have a panic attack just ordering a meal from a waiter/waitress. So if you’re my friend who’s currently reading this and think that I’m horrible socially now, I’m much more horrible then (lol).
I’ve always been awkward at social situations, at parties (not that I get invited to a lot of them), at social events, and I think if you know me you’d realize that I’m not the most diplomatic person you can meet. Yet I also don’t like conflict, I don’t really want to offend people, and I really find it hard to say “no” to most people, despite the fact that I probably would not want to do whatever is being asked of me.
The Common Crisis.
To an extent, I think indecisiveness and insecurity still plays a huge part on me today. Honestly, I think everyone my age is currently experiencing a huge increase in anxiety and insecurity. Partly due to the current f-ed up situation of the world, but I think partly also because most of the time we don’t even know what we want.
I wanted to study International Relations so bad during high school, despite the fact that I’m a science student. I study the hardest I could during high school, even went to Yogyakarta to study in an intensive course to reach a certain University that I wanted to go to for years.
Spoiler: I didn’t manage to enter that uni. I tried twice, failed twice. But it’s okay, I guess.
I got into the university that I’m in right now (which I grew to love by the way), I’m also currently majoring International Relations too, and I am also currently also learning with a bunch of people who are just as passionate as I am. I should currently have everything figured out right? I’d probably be aiming to be a diplomat, and so on.
Nope, not at all.
It turns out, things get saturated very fast in life. What you thought you wanted to learn was not all what you thought it would be, and sometimes the stress of heavy workload (read: papers, reviews, and tasks) certainly adds to the weight of that saturation. Sometimes you just can’t enjoy reading the types of articles that you loved reading so much during high school in university, maybe due to time constraints, or maybe due to the simple fact that you’re not doing it to appease yourself anymore; you’re simply doing it to get good grades, to reach 3.5 GPA, to graduate on time, to be a Cum Laude graduate. And it’s honestly frustrating, it’s so much pressure, even for doing something that you loved so much.
That’s why I (probably) will never post any IR piece in this website. It’s just too heavy for me right now, and I think I’m much better equipped to write pieces like this, add the fact that I’m currently much more in love with Pop Culture than I am with IR and that’s that.
Yet I’m not even remotely alone in this. A few while back I had a very lengthy conversations with several of my friends, and we’re basically handling the same issues. Issue in regards to academics, in regards to expectations, and in regards to dealing with people. Add small problems like love life and it makes something that’s actually simple drastically more complicated.
One of the topic that we heavily talked about was expectations. I talked about this in the first piece that I wrote, but this one’s sort of different. The expectation that we talked about here is in regards to how others see us and how we dealt with that expectations ourselves.
We talked about the process of going to university, how many expected us to reach more than what we managed to do. The pressure from peers and how life really backed us to a corner, how some of us really had no choice in what we wanted to do, and how it made us the way we are right now.
The constant comparisons many of us were forced to handle, be it in the matter of physical attributes (which I’ve totally given up on) or in academics and worldly expectations. The constant feeling and pressure to move on and hustle, to achieve something, to make sure that you are contributive and doing something productive to the world.
We discussed about how each of us processed all of life’s internal and external pressures. What we gained from the conversation was a very simple observation; it’s that everyone is tired, and to an extent we’re all suffering. We just cope with it differently, and I think it’s okay for us to recognize that once in a while.
Character Development, though.
But let’s get back to Chidi, and let’s not keep the tone of this piece too negative. Because despite of Chidi’s indecisiveness and all his bad traits, we get to see how much Chidi managed to grow in the four seasons that we observed him for.
But before that, a little fresh reminder, remember when I said that Chidi and the gang went to “The Bad Place” because they were fundamentally bad people? Well here’s another plot twist in the middle of the show: Everyone goes to The Bad Place eventually.
To drastically oversimplify how you get sorted into The Good/Bad Place, it’s basically a point system. If you managed to collect more good points than bad points then you’re off to The Good Place, and vice versa.
But the system is heavily flawed, and it’s calculations are too complicated and too multifactorial for an average reasonable human being to assess. For example when you buy a shoe, the afterlife system also calculates how that shoe is made, if that shoe is made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh (which you probably have no idea about) then you’d get a minus point because you are currently enjoying the product of unethical labour. Your participation in an exploitative system further adds your bad point, and so you’re probably going to end up tortured for all eternity in the afterlife.
That’s where Chidi and the rest of the gang (Michael, Eleanor, Tahani, Janet, and Jason) entered the fray. They convinced the judge (the person who decides the fate of humanity) to support their proposal of a new afterlife test (designed by Chidi), where people are going to be morally tested after they died to decide if they get to go to The Good or The Bad Place. TLDR; Chidi’s proposal and understanding of morality helped saved humanity.
But what I’d like to focus on in this section is Chidi’s personal development in the four seasons, where during that span of time he managed to at least mitigate and overcome his indecisive nature to become a better person. His process wasn’t fast either, it took hundreds of different reboots and lifetimes, spanning hundreds of years for him to be able to overcome that issue.
But the important thing is that he did. He managed to save humanity from being damned eternally in the end. He even managed to qualify for entering The Good Place (which be proceed to save from eternal boredom), and that just shows how much he has changed.
And I think and important thing to note is that Chidi was also vital for the development for all the other characters to progress. He steadied Eleanor’s ship, actively tried to make her a selfless and kind person, away from her selfish and spiteful behavior that made her fell into The Bad Place in the very first place. All the while finding solace in their time together, eventually blossoming into romance, and they ended up being each other’s (literal) soulmate.
He also went on and changed the formerly self-absorbed Tahani, the chaotic and irrational Jason, and even an immortal being like Michael into being better versions of themselves.
And I think that’s Chidi’s best quality. He makes other people better all the while helping himself.
I guess this applies to me too? Maybe, but it’s definitely not same level with Chidi’s character development.
I’m not as shy and awkward as I once was, and I’m at least better socially as a person. I’ve at least found a place where I can channel what I loved doing. I’ve met people who became so special to me, that I fully love with all my heart, and I’ve been enjoying all the process that I’ve been experiencing for some quite while now.
I really hoped that I’ve helped several people, maybe not drastically, maybe just a little bit, but I hope at least I leave a good print in their life. At least maybe I could comfort someone, if not by my actions, maybe my writing. Maybe by this writing.
I’ve tried accepting myself, with all my flaws. Tried to change, tried one or two different things. Achieved one or two things. It’s not much, but I think the effort is something that I should appreciate.
Because trying, even if it’s just the bare minimum, is an achievement in and of itself.
What Now?
The advice that I gave to my friend during our conversation was simply “jalanin aja”. What this means is try to keep on moving forward, it’s okay to rest, it’s okay to cry, it’s okay to stop once in a while. But just keep doing what you’re doing and hopefully you’ll find a way.
Maybe not now, and maybe not in the near future. But there’s a reason why those expectations were given to you in the very first place, because you’re capable.
You might not think you’re capable to achieve that, and I know just how dreadful it feels. But just because you think you’re not capable, it doesn’t mean you’re not.
I think that understanding that we are capable, but that our capability also has its limit, is the only way for us to be able to bear with what’s currently dragging us down.
‘I guess all I can do is embrace the pandemonium, find happiness in the unique insanity of being here, now.’ — Eleanor Shellstrop
I’m not special like Chidi, I don’t even have any tiny bit of special inside of me. I’m not going to save humanity from eternal damnation, and I’m probably not going to end my (in Chidi’s case, after-)life with someone like Eleanor.
But I think I grew, just enough to be okay. Just enough to accept the weird piece of junk I am. Just enough to be able to find a little solace and happiness in what I’m doing for now, while I plan for the future.
And as long as I can just keep doing the same, hopefully it’ll all be alright.
