How good is good enough?

Embarrassing confession: I am addicted to inspirational teacher movies. You know what I’m talking about. Hilary Swank in “Freedom Writers,” Michelle Pfeiffer in “Dangerous Minds,” Edward James Olmos in “Stand and Deliver,” Sidney Poitier in “To Sir, With Love.”  

Those teachers are my superheroes. I have no interest in the guys in tights and capes. Show me a frazzled wreck with bad hair, circles under her eyes and a splotch of coffee on her sweater, and I’m there with my popcorn. Sure, the first 30 minutes or so are a hell storm of failure, but the valiant teacher does not give up. Selflessly, relentlessly, the teacher fights on — sometimes with a pause for some in-class dancing — never resting until lives are changed, and then, even as the credits roll, still not resting.  

Damn, I wanted to be that superhero. It’s not just that I wanted to change lives; I wanted to live a life that really mattered from the moment I woke up in the morning until I dropped into bed at night. I think that every religion has at its core the idea of transcendence, a transcendence of ego and selfish desires in order to experience a higher truth, and that idea, impossible as it sounds, has always enchanted me. Back before I was a high-school teacher, when I was a writer, I often worried that I was a fairly silly person. I loved nothing more than to write material so ridiculous that I would sit at my own desk laughing like an idiot at my own jokes. In fact, I once laughed so hard while writing at a cafe that tears started rolling down my cheeks, causing a waitress to come over and discreetly ask me if I was all right. But I worried that my work, fun as it sometimes was, didn’t really matter. In the end, who really cared whether I wrote a moderately amusing script or an entertaining story? 

And so I quit writing and taught for five years in a very high-poverty community. Every single day, every single second I was definitely, indisputably, doing work that mattered. I loved my students, but during a time when the California public school system was being eviscerated by annual funding cuts, although I can say that there were many, many times when my work was as meaningful and sometimes as joyous as anything I’ve ever experienced, sometimes even transcendently profound, I also have to say that I became so wrung out that I was also cranky, depleted and numbed out emotionally. I dreaded dinner parties, because if somebody mentioned the public school system, I would be so appalled by how little anybody understood about what was really going on that I would lecture for a half hour on economic inequality. The fact that people became visibly bored only made me even more frustrated, causing me to lecture more vociferously.

I was, in short, intolerable.

When I finally left teaching, I resumed being a relatively silly person. I no longer work to the point of exhaustion. I still work with young people in high-poverty communities, but in smaller groups at nonprofits, often one on one, and with much more manageable hours. In addition, in my current business as a life coach, I get to have long conversations with creative people, which I often find as spiritual as anything I’ve done professionally. I’ve also loved having time to enjoy sunshine, family, friends and longish bouts of delicious solitude.  

I have let go of the idea that I will ever be a superhero. I so deeply admire people who give their lives to fighting economic injustice, truly selfless people who can give their whole being to a larger cause. Crazy as it sounds, it has been surprisingly hard for me to let go of the hope that I might be a good person — not an ordinary person with moments of goodness, but a person whose defining quality is goodness, whose daily life speaks to a transcendence of self. These people do exist. Watch Malala Yousafzai for one minute, and you will see that inner radiance. My husband works with a nun at Covenant House, a chatty and delightful Irish woman who fights tirelessly for young people living on the streets; she also has that radiance.  

But I am not one of them. And yet I’m inspired by the talmudic quote: “It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.” How much do we each need to give? With so much injustice in this country, with so much inequality, what is each person’s obligation?  If I have 16 waking hours each day, how many should be devoted to making the world at least a little bit better? I don’t know the answer. But I’ve come to believe that, paradoxically, I may actually make more of a difference if I live life joyously as my actual, relatively silly self than I would if I spent my life grimly trying to live up to my own ideal of goodness. Maybe all we can do is be fully, bravely, ridiculously ourselves. Maybe that, in the end, is the real superhero movie.

Ellie Herman is a writer, teacher and life coach.  She blogs at