by N. D. Guerre

Created on: June 19, 2008

When speaking of a virtual stranger and asking a trusted friend who knows them as well, and upon being told this person is "good", is your mind set at ease? Do you then adopt "good" as a way to describe this person you've not even met?

"Good", in any context is, at best, only a positive catch-all, a generic term for whatever the user would define as coming under the heading of "OK by me". "Good" tells us nothing and yet upon hearing it applied to someone else or even ourselves, it has power.

Just as the child who is told to "be good" is likely confused, perhaps wondering just what this particular adult would lump under that broad and ambiguous umbrella, I also must question what must be present in a person's make-up in order to elicit that description from me. I've used it, it's true, even as I find it a lazy substitute for a real word, a better word, and likely a whole slew of words needed to describe this person deemed just now as "good".

I have applied this very term to many simply to indicate my approval, but those earning that privilege from me have certainly been varied and different and quite diverse. The only thing that I can say in my own defense is that it is a way for me to say that, in my eyes at least, they possess more positive than negative qualities. If one hearing me say such a thing trusts me as a person, perhaps also finding me to be a "good" woman, then i suspect they will take that to heart, maybe even so much so as to now describe this person as "good" themselves.

For me personally to use that one word description of someone, they should possess at least some of the following, have demonstrated certain behaviors directly to me, or I should have witnessed them first hand or at least know them to be true. They might include such things as ...

Honesty...

But would that be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or only the basic tendency not to lie without shame? Hmmmm...

A positive outlook...

But would that mean that a depressed person can't be "good" or that it's "bad" or wrong to not be optimistic? Another Hmmmmmm...

Compassion...

Those who care for others are and should be admired, but what of those who sacrifice all so that they then become useless to any that depend upon them? I think there is certainly a balance to be achieved, a limit to how much one gives. I wonder just where that line is.

Humor...

I like to laugh. Now whether that is a characteristic that makes someone "good", I don't know, but I do know that quality in a person

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