Raise your hand if you ever opened a high school or college term paper with the Merriam-Webster definition of the assigned topic.  Classic!  It felt like such a solid and serious start, and it not-coincidentally added 20-30 words to the required word count.  It was — as we all dimly suspected — kind of a hack move, but it’s never a bad idea to define your terms.

 

To wit, from the dictionary of my own mind: If good were a food, it would be a bubbling bolognese in the winter and a drippy, golden peach in the summer.  If good were a book character, it would be Count Rostov from A Gentleman in Moscow or Charlotte from Charlotte's Web or Samwise Gamgee from Lord of the Rings.  If good were a famous human, it would be Fred Rogers or Dolly Parton, and if good were an animal, it would be an old, slow, graying golden retriever.

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Word-defining seems like the perfect opportunity for a word cloud, which — according to my daughters — is very 2010.  But that was my peak parenting period and word clouds never made it into my skill set.  I still think they are verbally efficient and visually nifty, so here's my chance to try:

 

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​​How did I do?  Yeah, probably too much?  Any other words you would add?  Or subtract?

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For the most part, these are the comfort / good-mood / positive-intent words of the English language ... and also in actual life.  Good is your funny, reliable longtime friend, the seat kindly offered to the elderly passenger, the adorable baby's tiny toes, the crackling fire that warms cold bones, the comforting book reached for again and again.  Is good cool?  With the likes of dependable and heartening and earnest and neighborly ... ehh, not really.  But does good rise up when the chips are down — when you're hit with the stomach flu or a streak of bad luck or a broken heart?  Yes, it sure does.  And can good give a medium-average-okay day a boost of comfort and shine?  Yes, it sure can.  For all its soft, puffy-cloud edges, good has some real horsepower.

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​​A lower note: Sharp-eyed searchers will find a few unexpected, downer kind of words clouding things up.  Libby, why ruin the fun with a word like melancholy??  IMO, if you gate-keep and filter the concept of good too heavily, you'll end up with a thin, highly-processed, high-fructose corn syrup-ed version of good ... and then, really, why bother?  Good is more than a fluffy confection or a popsicle from the back of the freezer; the kind of good I like best is more like a slow, nourishing meal that someone took time and care to make.  Good can have depth and umami: warm, rich, complex, and savory, not just straight-up sweet.  

 

Fortunately, we have a wide spectrum of good in the world — Ted Lasso, otter videos, and peach trees and also a beautiful eulogy, a sincere apology, or a poem that makes you cry.  Mixed together, it's all very ... good.​​​​​​