It’s why Michael interferes when the four get sent back to Earth for a second chance to prove themselves in life. He knows that without support, they’ll eventually end up right where they started. This lesson isn’t about excusing a person’s abhorrent behavior because they didn’t grow up with enough care to make them good, it’s about encouraging those of us who did to put that same love and care we received back out into the world as much as we can. You never know when an act of kindness could change someone’s life and set them on a better path.
It Doesn’t Matter if People Are “Good” or “Bad,” What Matters Is Trying to Be a Better Person Than You Were Yesterday
Another quote from Michael that holds a really valuable lesson is from the episode “A Chip Driver Mystery.” He says “What matters isn’t if people are good or bad. What matters is if they’re trying to be better today than they were yesterday.”
As Eleanor so eloquently says early on in the series “Pobody’s Nerfect.” We can’t expect every person to be a bastion of moral superiority at all times. It’s just not feasible, especially in the world we live in where every choice we make often has unintended consequences. But rather than giving up and resigning to the fact that being a good person isn’t always easy, we can at least try to be a better person that we were yesterday. Being a better person isn’t about making one grand gesture and hoping it erases all of the bad you’ve done, it’s about taking smaller steps every day until being “good” becomes second nature.
Failure Isn’t inherently Bad, It Means You’re Trying
As people, we tend to get discouraged when we aren’t automatically good at something. Oftentimes failure is even considered to be a moral negative that reflects badly on someone’s character. Sometimes this encourages people to always try their best, but more often than not it discourages someone from even trying in the first place. If someone is trying to be a better person, but is struggling with it, we shouldn’t belittle them for their efforts. Once again, a quote from Michael perfectly exemplifies this. He says “You fail, and then you try something else, and you fail again and again. And you fail a thousand times, and you keep trying. Because maybe the 1,001st idea might work.”
Just as failure isn’t inherently bad, perfection isn’t inherently good, as we see with Chidi. He spends his entire life studying philosophy and agonizing over being a good person and making the best choices, but it’s his fear of failing at that and his fear of making the “wrong” choice that ultimately lead to him ending up in the bad place. Instead of learning through experience and failure, he stays paralyzed in indecision. We never know for sure if we’re good at something or if it’s the right choice until we try.
Don’t Fight Your Own Sadness at the State of the World, It’ll Just End Up “Leaking Out of You Anyway”
When Michael is having his existential crisis in season 2, Eleanor tells him “All humans are aware of death. So we’re all a little bit sad all the time. That’s just the deal…but we don’t get offered any other ones. And if you try and ignore your sadness, it just ends up leaking out of you anyway. I’ve been there. And everybody’s been there. So don’t fight it.”
