Content note: This post discusses the Rwandan genocide, including ethnic violence and mass atrocity. Please read at your own discretion.
I’ve behaved quite charitably over the course of the past week. I donated money to two charities, left someone an unexpected tip, and looked after my nephews for a few hours on one of my busiest days of the week.
There’s no question that my actions were positive contributions to society. My donations will go toward providing disadvantaged families with food and shelter. An employee went home with a little more money to put toward their bills or a treat (hopefully). My sister-in-law was able to go to her annual check up in peace and enjoy a little bit of silence during the car ride.
Don’t be so quick to judge any of this as a sign of inherent goodness, though.
The context behind each of these charitable acts might change your interpretation.
Both of my donations were made during online check outs. I was given the option to round up to the nearest dollar with the proceeds going to Feeding America and Ronald McDonald House. My thought process was more like, “There’s no reason not to donate. It’s just a few cents, and rounded dollar amounts are easier to work with anyway.”
Make no mistake—I’m more than happy to contribute to organizations that truly help people in need, but there is a big difference between actively seeking out opportunities to donate and passively checking a box during a transaction.
On the other hand, my decision to tip was solely motivated by excitement that I now have the opportunity to tip friendly, hardworking people at one of my favorite businesses in town. They were already providing quality service before the company allowed tipping, and they don’t work in an environment where tipping is standard like a restaurant.
I simply wanted to show my appreciation for a consistently positive customer experience.
Babysitting my nephews is a mutually beneficial arrangement. My sister-in-law gets some time alone to run her errands, and I get baby cuddles while my homeschoolers get a little socialization from the older boys. Everyone wins!
These decisions were layered in degrees of both self-sacrifice and self-service—raising a thought-provoking question.
Was I being a good person or simply doing good things?
The answer is complicated—and not just for myself.
What makes someone a good person, and why does it matter anyway?
These are the questions we’ll explore in this month’s theme of goodness.
What Makes Someone a Good Person?
Goodness is an expression of our moral character—our consideration of others, self-regulation, and moral identity.
Genuinely good people do not act simply out of concern for ethics or societal expectations. Their actions reflect who they are on the inside.
Interestingly, we can often look to some of the darkest moments of humanity to find the most powerful demonstrations of true goodness.
One such example is that of a Hutu woman named Godleaves Mukamunana. In 1994, she risked ostracism and even death to hide a Tutsi woman from Hutu extremists during the Rwandan genocide.
The woman survived, but Mukamunana and her family paid a heavy price for their decision to stay behind and help their Tutsi neighbors instead of fleeing as soon as the killings began.
Authorities rounded up her husband along with other Hutus because they had no way of distinguishing those who had participated in the killings from the rescuers. He was sent to prison for 12 years. Mukamunana received no sympathy or support from her Hutu neighbors, either.
Her Hutu neighbors responded to her decision to help the Tutsis instead of killing them by saying in no uncertain terms, “You’re no longer one of us.”
Still, Mukamunana takes pleasure in seeing her Tutsi neighbor alive.
When asked if the long-lasting fallout caused any feelings of regret, Mukamunana exclaimed, “That cannot stop me from doing it again!. Actually, I’d do it double. I’d do it again and again and again. Because now I see the outcome.”
The pain she feels is for the estimated 800,000 people who died at the hands of armed forces, clergy members, medical staff, teachers, and ordinary citizens—including men, women, and children.
Godleaves Mukamunana showed an extraordinary amount of empathy, compassion, and conscientiousness when it was not only unpopular to do so, but dangerous as well.
It wouldn’t be difficult to conclude that those qualities are firmly integrated into her personality.
Her moral character suggests that she is truly a good person, but what is to be said of the people who actively participated in the genocide?
Do their actions reveal them to be bad people?
Are They Bad People?
As horrific as the actions of the perpetrators were, the answer to this question isn’t as black-and-white as we often make it out to be in these types of situations.
The Rwandan genocide stemmed from over 80 years of ethnic tension sewn by Belgian colonists and Christian missionaries who took control of the region after World War I.
Deemed racially superior by the colonial government, Tutsis were initially granted the authority to assign forced labor and hand down punishments to the Hutu majority.
Naturally, this oppression fueled resentment, leading to a social revolution backed by Belgian colonists—whose loyalty had shifted away from the Tutsis by 1959.
Economic collapse in 1973 gave rise to extremism. By the early 90’s, the government and a radical political faction known as “Hutu Power” had united the majority against the Tutsis.
Extremist organizations formed youth militias, armed civilians throughout the country, and launched an aggressive anti-Tutsi propaganda campaign. Marrying or doing business with them was declared traitorous. Popular music included dehumanizing language and warnings about the Tutsis scheming to exterminate Hutus, and listeners were urged to eliminate them.
The assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, on April 6, 1994 triggered a purging of moderate Hutu politicians and set the 100-day genocide in motion.
To their credit, many local leaders were hesitant to set up roadblocks, form search parties, and kill Tutsis, but fear of sanctions and being removed from office moved them to comply.
Extreme poverty, land scarcity, and years of psychological manipulation made it all too easy to convince ordinary citizens to participate in the killings. For years, they’d been told through popular entertainment that Hutus needed to do everything in their power to prevent their former oppressors from rising up and brutalizing them again.
“As one radio broadcast said, this “war” had to become everyone’s responsibility.”
— Report on the Rwandan Genocide, African Union
Civilians were also promised cash, food, alcohol, looted property, cattle, and land that had previously belonged to murdered Tutsis—powerful incentives for people already struggling to feed their families.
Rwanda’s Hutu population was having a collective fight-or-flight response to a group of people who had been scapegoated by the government. In light of this, the question becomes less about whether or not the participants in this genocide were bad people, and more about how much of their behavior was driven by misdirected survival responses.
How many of them had never fathomed themselves capable of such violence before they’d been convinced that the Tutsis posed a threat to their very existence?
None of this excuses any of the atrocities committed against the Tutsi. Godleaves Mukamunana did not allow herself to be pressured into forfeiting her sense of compassion and human decency, and she wasn’t alone in standing firm in her convictions.
Choosing the path of goodness was always possible, but it wasn’t easy.
Mister Rogers summed this up better than I could:
Many of us would like to think we are good people who would never intentionally cause grave harm to others. Nonetheless, it’s important to remember that tragedies like the Rwandan genocide, the Holocaust, the Salem Witch Trials, etc would not have been possible without the explicit or complicit support of the majority.
We are all vulnerable to the power of suggestion. After all, the propaganda that stoked up murderous hatred toward the Tutsis isn’t much different from the social media campaigns that drive people to fight over viral products or go to extremes to be thin.
The stakes become much higher when the ideas being promoted online involve specific groups of people, and we’re seeing this in our current society.
We’re constantly being fed divisive, inflammatory messaging about specific genders, races, nationalities, sexual orientations, political affiliations, classes, and religions. The tension is palpable, and it’s already resulted in a number of high-profile acts of violence.
There’s danger in assuming our own goodness in such a volatile climate. We all have nervous systems that override reason when we feel threatened by something or someone. We have to work hard to keep our prefrontal cortex in the driver seat, so we can live by our values even when it’s hard.
In short, goodness isn’t something we are. It’s something we practice. The more we practice good qualities like love, joy, peace, kindness, and patience, the easier it is to stick with them no matter what comes our way.
What Does It Mean to Be a Good Person?
If we want the fortitude to choose goodness in this chaotic world, we need to have a powerful why.
Godleaves Mukamunana risked her life for her Tutsi neighbor to maintain a clean conscience. She had a clearly defined set of values and wouldn’t have felt right going against them. To her, death was a better outcome than a lifetime of guilt for having blood on her hands.
What values matter most to you, and are you willing to stick with them at all costs?
I personally want to be loving, kind, honest, and loyal to the people who mean the most to me. That being said, I have several areas that need tending.
For example, I’ve been terrible about reaching out to people lately because I’ve been lost in my own sense of overwhelm.
I haven’t been prioritizing quality time with my children, either.
Though these shortcomings aren’t as extreme as what took place in Rwanda, they do indicate that my concern for others is being overridden by my nervous system and poor executive functioning.
I’m not the only person in the world who feels weighed down by anxiety, financial pressure, and health concerns. Perhaps my friends and family members could use support for the things they’re going through, especially my children.
Why should that matter enough for me to work on it?
For one thing, I didn’t bring my children into this world to be seen but not heard. How I treat them shapes how they view themselves. It isn’t enough to tell them I love them. I need to show them by my actions that they are worth my time, attention, and respect.
The same can be said for the adults in my life. Taking the initiative to check in with them is a way for me to show them how much they mean to me, and that can be a lifeline in this time of uncertainty.
Does my failure to prioritize the concerns of others mean that I’m a selfish or bad person?
Not at all—even if that’s the story I tell myself at times.
The truth is that I have severe ADHD which means that half the time I’m just trying to put myself on a productive task and keep myself on it until it’s done. That alone is super demanding. I’m a neurodivergent human who is prone to dropping the ball on many things, but this isn’t an excuse.
It’s an important reframe because perfectionism is the enemy of good. If we let ourselves get bogged down in the guilt of falling short, then we run the risk of giving up and allowing our worst moments to define us.
A clearly defined why gives us the motivation to keep practicing good qualities. I’m driven to work on showing personal interest in others because I want connection and to leave people better than I found them.
If you’ve been dealing with guilt over being out of alignment with your values, remind yourself that you’re only human and go back to your why.
We may not be as good as we want to be now, but we can be if we keep our mind set on the good we aim to do moving forward—not on past failures we can’t change.
Next Steps for Your Self-Discovery Journey
If you’d like to join me in making goodness a daily practice this month, here are some resources to help you get started.
Subscribe to receive your free Goodness Readiness Toolkit, designed to help you explore this month’s theme at your own pace.
Gentle Ways to Apply This:
- Examine how you actually show up when doing the right thing costs something—time, comfort, belonging, or peace of mind. This free Moral Character Reflection Quiz includes seven real-world scenarios with prompts that move you from your gut reaction to a deeper understanding of what drives your choices—and what that tells you about your moral character.
- Identify specific situations, emotional states, and relationship dynamics that make it hardest for you to live by your values. Use this free printable, Triggers & Patterns Worksheet, as a gentle reflection tool.
- Define your personal why. My Goodness Why: A Values Clarity Worksheet guides you through naming the values that make you feel most like yourself, identifying the people your goodness touches most, connecting your daily behavior to something bigger, and writing a why statement in your own words.
Additional Inspiration:
Why Goodness Is Worth the Effort
Goodness matters, but the reason is up to each and every one of us to choose our why.
It isn’t something we inherently are. It’s something we practice every time we decide to stay in alignment with our values—even when it costs us something.
When we find ways to do good deeds every day, we make it easier to stand firm in our convictions in difficult times.
If this post resonates with you, please share it with anyone who needs a reminder that goodness is a choice.
What values matter most to you, and how do you practice them every day?
Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. If you’d like to receive an email notification when the next post goes live, you can subscribe using the form below. In the next post, we’ll explore ways to be genuinely good toward ourselves.
If you’d like a more immersive experience, feel free to join me on Patreon for exclusive tools designed to help you set intentions and put each month’s theme into practice—plus a space to share your journey and connect with others doing the same work.
Keep it kind, respectful, and focused on self-love and growth—let’s make this a safe, uplifting space. 🌿