What Makes Life “Good” And What Makes Life “Bad”?
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Today I watched Heather Lanier’s Ted Talk “Good” and “bad” are incomplete stories we tell ourselves and it made me question our use of the words “good” or “bad” when describing life or things or even people.
As she said it in her ted talk, we are very quick to label something “good” or “bad”.
For instance, if you break the heel of your shoe and then it starts pouring and then someone steals your taxi, we would label it a “bad day”. Or if on the contrary, you win the lottery, that would be deemed a “good day”.
In her ted talk, Lanier also takes the example of her daughter who was born with a rare condition. She explains that when she was born, the doctors said that she was this way because she either was a “bad seed” or came from a “bad soil”. Then she explained that most of the doctors that she saw would concentrate on the “bad” / negative aspects of her daughter.
I personally already questioned us as human beings and talked about whether we were born “good” or “bad”. I came to the conclusion that deep down we have a “good” core. But that doesn’t mean that we won’t be bad and do bad things.
Today, Lanier’s ted talk opened my eyes to this notion of “good” versus “bad”.
What if nothing is ever good nor bad?
What if things are just the way that they are and people are just the way that they are and life is just the way that it is?
Maybe nothing is ever really good nor bad but it just is.
Maybe things are just complex and they’re not supposed to be either good nor bad.
Maybe a situation that we deem bad is simply not. Maybe it’s just life.
Life is not just good nor bad. Sometimes we have situations that make us think that our life is bad and sometimes we have situations that make us think that our life is good. And sometime a situation that we thought was bad becomes what we call “a blessing in disguise” and it turns out to be a good thing. Just like a good situation could turn into a bad one.
So if good situations can turn into bad ones and bad situations can turn into good ones are they really just good or just bad? Or maybe they just are. Maybe that’s just life. Maybe it’s neither a good situation nor a bad situation but it’s simply just life. It’s just simply how life is.
And maybe we’re not good nor bad but we’re just human beings.
Maybe we just have to accept that things are more complex than we think.
Life is complexe. Human beings are complexe. And nothing will ever be just one or the other but maybe it’ll be a mix of everything and nothing at the same time.
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