Good/Bad Black/White



Life is a complicated thing.  Rarely are things so clearly cut that they can be sorted into a good/bad bin.  As Cynthia Weill and Barry Mann wrote back in the 1960s and the Monkees sang: 
"It was easy then to tell truth from lies
Selling out from compromise
Who to love and who to hate
The foolish from the wise
But today there is no day or night
Today there is no dark or light
Today there is no black or white
Only shades of gray"

 So as complicated as life may be now (and it IS complicated), it was just as complicated "back then" and even before.

 Good/Bad may be easy to figure out in the movies where the bad guys wear black hats and the good wear white, but it's not like that in the real world.  Things have been done/said in the name of "good" that have really been pretty bad.  And on the flip side, sometimes things or even people that are branded "bad" aren't that at all.  Black and white merge into various shades of gray and it is up to us as human beings to figure out where it falls on our own spectrum.

 With that said, there are a few basic things that GENERALLY fall into the Good/Bad bins.  So if you are going to do any of the following, consider this:

  • Mocking a person, place or thing:  BAD
  • Sincerely complimenting a person or their work:  GOOD
  • Smiling:  GOOD
  • Holding the door open for a person:  GOOD
  • Biting, kicking or hitting a person or animal:  BAD
  • Saying Hello:  GOOD
  • Ignoring a person:  BAD
  • Doing someone a favor:  GOOD
  • Complaining when someone does you a favor:  BAD
  • Saying Thank You:  GOOD
  • Listening:  GOOD
Whatever you say; whatever you do...will it be Good or Bad?  Or will it fall into a shade of gray? 

Words and actions...what do we want them to be?  Where do we want them to fall?

Perhaps if we thought about it, even just once during a day where we are all so busy and so often not thinking about consequences and feelings; perhaps we would make not good, but better choices in our lives and our world.

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