When did you decide to try to be a good person?

By “good person”, I mean whatever that means to you.

The easiest way for me to explain what I intend by this question is to lay it out alongside its alternatives. By deciding to be a good person, I mean that you have taken this first of three possible paths:

1) Realizing one day that you had never actually tried to be a better person before, and deciding to give it a shot.

The alternatives I see are:

2) Never having this realization.
a. Because being a good person has been an implicit goal for you, something you never had to think about but just always strove for without reflection.
b. Because being a better person has never been an implicit goal for you, and you’ve simply never come to the realization that you’re not as good of a person as you want to be, and that you haven’t ever tried to be better.

&

3) Realizing one day that you had never tried to be a better person before, and deciding that you don’t care to try.

Did you take one of these paths? Why? Is there a story behind the reasons for your decision or non-decision?
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I never thought about it at all until I met my best friend in college, five years ago. He’s such a good guy. We met our freshman year and instantly started hanging out after class all the time. We’d talk about everything under the sun, except when I made offhanded critical remarks about mutual acquaintances. It took me a long time to realize it, but he would never respond to anything people said that he perceived as talking about someone behind his or her back. If directly confronted with such a statement in the form of a question that demanded response, he would merely say “I don’t know anything about that,” looking steadily in my eyes. It was such a nice way to make me ashamed of myself – he wasn’t even trying to help me change, but simply was himself already the way I suddenly realized I wanted to be. He lead by example without attempting to lead. That’s when I realized that I’d never even thought about trying to be a good person before, and when I decided I wanted to try to be a better person.

I’ve been watching a lot of My Name is Earl recently.