Good Will: What it Means for Your Business, Family, and Community

How good are you? What does "good" mean, anyway? Are there different kinds of good: the greater good, the common good, the individual good? Is it a matter of opinion, a matter of perspective, a matter of interpretation? Are there degrees of good? Is good relative or absolute?

Good or evil is such a forced choice. Is there nothing less polar? ...Like maybe "good," "not quite so good," "pretty good," "mostly good," "a little ungood," "slightly bad"? "Evil" conjures up nightmares of monsters crawling out of burning holes in the ground or maybe just hiding in your closet at 2 AM. Yet the counter-point isn't graphically equivalent. "Good" connotes positiveness and comfort more than imparting visions of silvery figures riding light beams from the sky.

A less emotive counter-point to good may be "bad." But is this just semantics? "Evil" and "bad" are on the same side of the universe, but they are not synonymous. Too, "bad" has a lot of play to it, a lot of wiggle room. Couldn't something be bad because it's not good, right now? Give this "bad" some time, be patient, a little tolerant, and it could come around to good. Right... Wrong.

Who decides? Is it the mass of humanity oozing outward to cover the globe? Is it the jigsaw puzzle pieces of nation states flung over the land masses and seascapes? Is it the World Bank, Silicon Valley, Tallahassee? Is it CNN, Glenn Beck, Donald Trump?

What difference does it make, anyway? This consideration may seem irrelevant, misplaced, or even invasive in a global corporate miasma focused on the bottomline.

Not so. What defines your business as better than a like business down the street or across town? What about when you're going head-to-head with competition in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Portland? London, Frankfort, Paris? Tokyo, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Shanghai, Sydney? Why should someone buy your products or services rather than someone else's? Why should someone decide to work with you rather than someone else?