The Concepts of Good and Bad

The story of my encounter with N, the vendor who came to collect the drying equipment from my apartment, really made me reflect on the concepts of good and bad that live inside all our heads.

It all began three days ago when my water heater pipe collapsed while I was out, flooding my apartment and seeping into my neighbor’s ceiling below. It was a situation no one ever wants to come home to: water everywhere, an upset neighbor, and the frantic rush to get everything cleaned up. The maintenance team was quick to respond, and they called a vendor to bring in heavy-duty air dryers and blowers to prevent any mold from growing. Those machines hummed day and night, and finally, after three days, they had done their job.

That was when N, the vendor, showed up to collect his equipment.

I thanked him politely, expressing my hope that everything had dried properly and that I wouldn’t have to go through this inconvenience again.

N gave me a small, almost amused smile. “I hope someone else gets flooded today while I’m in this building. I live 45 minutes from here.”

I paused, not sure if I had heard him correctly. Who would wish for someone else’s misfortune like that? But N seemed completely unbothered.

“It’s my job to make sure places get dried out,” he explained. “I’ve been doing it for 15 years, and every time a pipe bursts, I get more work. Each equipment rental is $800, and I’ve already bought 18 of them.”

As he spoke, I felt a strange tension in my mind. On one hand, part of me wanted to wish him well for his business. It’s honest work, after all. But another part of me bristled—being flooded is no fun. How could someone actually look forward to that?

N continued without missing a beat, almost excited now. “I can’t wait till we get freezing temperatures again.”

“Right,” I replied, feeling a shiver of recognition. “Then the pipes will start exploding.” I thought back to the Texas snowpocalypse a few years ago, when everything went wrong for so many people—power outages, broken pipes, chaos everywhere. “That must have been a good year for you.”

“Oh, absolutely!” he exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. “It was a great year! Can’t wait for winter again. This is how I run my business.”

It was in that moment I realized that, to N, bad weather and bursting pipes weren’t something to fear—they were opportunities. To him, the same event that brought trouble into my life was the very thing that brought him success and prosperity.

And there it was, the concept of good and bad—how they exist not in the event itself, but in our perception of it. The same flood that upended my peace of mind and my neighbor’s apartment was a good thing for N, a potential boost to his livelihood. It made me think about the voices in our heads that label things as “good” or “bad.” We each carry this duality within us. What’s good for one person can be bad for another, and the world constantly moves between these contrasts, never really settling into one category.

Good and bad are like two neighbors living in the same building inside our heads, each with their own perspective. When something happens, one neighbor may celebrate, and the other may complain. It’s natural, perhaps inevitable, to have both voices. The key is to recognize that neither one holds the whole truth. The world is full of complexity, filled with stories like mine and N’s, where someone’s misfortune feeds another’s fortune, and both sides coexist.

Maybe the true challenge lies not in labeling events as “good” or “bad” but in understanding the multiplicity of viewpoints that coexist around every occurrence. That day, as N left with his equipment, I found myself silently wishing him luck with his business, though maybe not too much luck this winter.

After all, sometimes the real growth comes in understanding that what we deem as “bad” can be someone else’s “good.” And whether we embrace one or the other depends on which neighbor in our head we decide to listen to.

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