It’s the most wonderful time of the year (in my Andy Williams Christmasy voice). People are walking around happy opening doors and letting people in front of them in traffic. Many good deeds are happening everywhere. I love this time of year, I truly do.

People seem to want to be good now, for now, anyway. Is it the anticipation of Santa or is it just the sweet smell of the shopping sprees?

Good can be defined a few ways.

Okay, so when we are talking morals, we look at “good” and “evil”. This is hard to really put a finger on but very important. In this way, we think about the Creator, God, our purpose as humans and other questions. We all have a purpose and in that measure, there must be a standard of our created nature or a way to measure how well we are living out our purpose. This standard is used to judge our behaviors as well as our motivations. For example, as a Christian, the Bible is our standard.

The other way is “good” being the counterpoint of “bad”. Here, good is measured by someone’s performance from some agreed upon standard. We have laws in our society that have certain standards of behavior spelled out and they inform us on what is good and what is bad. These standards are man-made and change as time goes on and things change in society. Sometimes these “standards”are not looked at the same way but the people who are set to judge others.

Because we do not know everything we can only work to be our best selves and act with integrity. Every person we know is going to look at things differently so their standard of good may not line up with ours. Is their an absolute good or bad? Who knows. We can only do what we can to live our best life and attempt not to injure anyone along the way….in any way.