Good or Bad?

It was early morning. I was walking in the hallway of my usual nursing home, performing my usual rounds with patients, working on their swallowing using the breakfast hour. I saw this particular gentleman away from his room, roaming in the hallway on his wheelchair with a confused look on his face. I walked up to him. Wished him "good morning" and asked if he needed some help. He replied in the confused manner that he was lost and was not finding his room at all. If you work at a set up where all your patients are elderly population, this is not a particularly unusual scenario for you. Patients with dementia often show this forgetfulness and confusion. Luckily, I knew this person's room number so I rolled his wheelchair their. After reaching his room and looking at the familiar surroundings, he was relieved. He thanked me saying, "you are an angel. You are such a good lady." I was amused by his comment because this gentleman never liked participating in therapy. Whenever I visited him and encouraged him to participate in treatment, he always showed dislike towards me saying, "you are the worst person I have ever seen." Well none of these comments are intentional so I never really took it seriously. 

Though, after this incidence, I thought, all this good and bad thing is so interesting. Even though, we do not have so quickly changing ideas about good and bad like this patient with dementia, we also do not have any permanent good or bad profiling. One person's good can be absolutely bad for another person in same or different situation. Like being vegan can be a "good" thing for some one because it is the non-violent and easy way to live. It might be a noble thing to do in a well populated urban or countryside living. On the other hand, it is an useless thing for a person living in harsh environmental conditions where  there are not many resources available. Killing other animals for food might be an only way to keep up with hunger. 

This is true even for many other things which we absolutely find easy to categorize as good or bad. e.g. hurting others can appear as an obvious bad thing but when a physician hurts you with a needle for injections, life saving surgeries or for pathology lab testing, it becomes an act of kindness. 

Looks like there does not exists like good or bad. "Good things" in particular times can become an obsolete thing after that era passes. I am sure in the past when people punished ladies calling them"witch" due to the suspicion about her practicing "witchcraft" must have been considered as an act of utter importance to save humanity. In today's world we thankfully have realized that it was one of  the most horrific things to do.  

If there does not exist any good or bad then on what basis can we make choices? What can we teach our children to do? I think to make choices, rather than going on good or bad line, we should teach our children to evaluate the situation, list out their choices, consider and foresee  the consequences related to each choice and then pick one path. The consequences can be speculated from our past experiences or even from the experiences of others. Looking at the world with  the glasses of just black and white lenses is not realistic. To find out the real colors of the world and to identify which one matches our personality, it is required to take off the glasses. Enjoy the beautiful colors of life. Face the reality. 

Embrace the world as it is. Neither good nor bad. Just as it really is. 

As said by Kabir, 

बुरा जो देखन मैं चला, बुरा न मिलिया कोय, जो दिल खोजा आपना, मुझसे बुरा न कोय।