“Jack, it doesn’t matter what you are. It matters what you do. And even monsters can do good in this world.”
– Mia Vallens/Kelly Kline, Supernatural
Season 13, Episode 4, “The Big Empty

The exact circumstances surrounding this quote a little complex and filled with spoilers. Suffice to say, a young man, named Jack, has serious reason to question if he’s a good guy or a monster. He is speaking with a woman, Mia, who has a unique ability to impersonate the boy’s mother, Kelly, who died giving birth to him. Mia also happens to be a therapist, and she’s been using her ability to give her patients some closure and counsel and help them heal after losing their loved ones. So, when Jack unburdens his soul to her, she is able to give him some much-needed guidance with his mother’s face and voice.

When Jack shares his fears that he may be a monster, this is how she answers him, and she knows what she’s talking about. She is not exactly “normal” herself, and her past is anything but clean. But she’s turned away from that, and she’s trying to do something good with herself now. Seeing this young soul before her, so innocent yet so filled with doubt, she shares this truth which she herself is following.

And she is absolutely right. For a show that so heavily involves hunting monsters, Jack certainly wouldn’t be the first, or last, to choose a better way.

People, of all kinds, all over the world, have often gotten caught up in what they are. It could be something they can’t help, what they were born as, or it could be something they’ve chosen, something they’ve become, but they see what they are and limit themselves with it. They may not mean to, but they trap themselves, and rob themselves of the good they could do, and so they rob the world of something good.

What one forgets is that what one is, whether born that way or having made a choice somewhere along the way, does not diminish what one may become. If they’ve done bad before, they can still do good now, in the present. Whatever they are, they can do better. They can do good in this world, and leave it that much better for their choice.

If there can be hope for inhuman creatures, how much more hope ought there to be for any normal human, eh?