Most of us like the idea of being good, and since it can mean different things to each one of us, I’d like to explore this topic a little deeper.

As a little girl, being “good” meant obeying my parents, doing well in school and feeling good when someone told my mother, “She’s a good little girl.”

As we grow older, how to be good is generally associated with giving to others, whether it’s a listening ear, helping someone in need, or volunteering our time for what we perceive to be a “good” cause.

I don’t know if you’ve read the book, How to be Good, by Nick Hornby, but I highly recommend it. Not only is the author male, but his protagonist is a mother, wife and doctor, and Hornby captures the true essence of what it’s like to be a wife living with a grumpy, rude, negative husband, who writes a grumpy, rude, negative newspaper column about things that irritate him in his world

Wanting to file for divorce, something strange happens.Rather than trusting his wife, the Doctor, to heal his back aches and headaches, he finds a quack to heal him. His name is DJ Goodnews, and with his hot hands, he not only cures David’s aches and pains, but transforms him into a good man.

Since David is no longer the same man, and thus can no longer write negative columns, he wants to change his family, including his two kids, aged eight and ten, and forces them to give away half their toys, and one of their computers. Together with DJ Goodnews, who moves in with them, David starts an “adopt a homeless teenager into your home,” neighborhood program.

Being good, is taken to the other extreme, and he shows the consequences of what being too good can do to a family.

It’s interesting to think that there are limits on being good. What’s your opinion?
I shall write mine in the comments section,