Does Something Good Always Come Out Of Something Bad?

When something awful happens in our lives we can sometimes find comfort in believing that something good always comes from something bad. It helps us, too, to look for silver linings or to believe that everything happens for a reason. Those of us with good coping skills (and even just natural instincts) often know how to make the best of a bad situation, or even turn it into a better one than it is.

There is some wisdom and good sense in thinking in a way that helps us cope. Such thinking is not necessarily always wrong, and it certainly is not my wish, aim, even stand to say that ideas associated with such thinking are wrong.

Still, having said that, and getting down to the question of whether something good always comes from something bad; I have to say it just does not. Believing that, however, isn't necessarily a bad or unhealthy thing either. In fact, I've always found some comfort in seeing bad for what it is, not "assigning it" some positive outcome, and finding a way to come to terms with, and get past it, in spite of that.

I think, in order to come up with an answer to the question, we need to look at bad from two different angles. We can think of bad things that happen in our lives as "within the context" of our own, one, life/self; or we can think of bad things that happen in our lives as things that "belong" to the larger world (other people) too. It is, I believe, impossible to consider the bad event/situation from both viewpoints.

Although the term, "island", is not generally used in the way I will use it; I'm going to use it in my own way for ease of writing/reading. It is said that "no man is an island", but when we are going through something terrible, we are, in some ways, an island (in terms of the fact that we are the only one who will experience our own, individual, set of circumstances/emotions as we do). When four siblings lose a parent, they are both going through the same thing and yet, in many ways, experiencing the loss from an "island" viewpoint as well. Each sibling will have had his own, individual, relationship with the parents at any given stage in either person's life.

So, with this connotation for "island", if we consider the terrible things from that viewpoint; we realize that bad things often alter the course our lives, and that we often learn from the experiences. In general, what happens after a bad event or situation is that we move on in spite of it. When we do move on, we do bring ourselves into that new path; so our choices and circumstances are not necessarily directly stemming from the bad event or situation.

Sometimes we choose that new path after having been "de-railed" from the one on we thought we would always travel; but even if we get "picked up off our own train tracks" and "placed on a new set", from the moment that happens we have the most substantial role in what happens next (at least to the limited extent that any of us has that kind of power).

While bad can certainly end the way our lives once were, it doesn't necessarily have to decide our fate either. To some extent, we have the power to determine how much power we will allow bad to have over our lives. By the same token, we can decide whether we will attribute every good thing that ever follows bad to that bad. Some people may prefer to see things that way, and that's their right. At the same time, I prefer not to "give" the bad that has happened in my life "credit" for any good that happened to follow, but that was not directly attributable to the bad event/situation.

We tend to learn from the bad things in life. Sometimes that learning would be considered "good" because it can come in the form of wisdom. Some lessons we learn, though, are lessons that would be better left unlearned. There are lessons that nurture the soul and those that scar it (and sometimes destroy the chance of it every being truly at peace again); so all learning from bad things is not good learning. Even some wisdom is the kind of wisdom that we could have been happier living without.

From the "island" viewpoint, I'll use some examples from my own life (both because those are my frames of references for my beliefs, but also, I suppose, because there is a part of my generally-peaceful-but-scarred-enough soul to have enough anger to want to put these "monsters" in the line of my own verbal fire, and - all these years later - reaffirm that none of them had a shred of redeeming value, worth, or good in them.

The first one involves the fact that my siblings and I, as well as my children, my sister's children, and my sister's grandchildren would not exist if, when my mother was young, she had not married a young man who would be killed in World War II before they ever had children.

From my "island", it would seem that a whole lot of good came from that (some would say) senseless death. After all, my parents eventually got married, had their family, and built a lovely childhood and home life for that family. Lots of love and "decent people" came out of it all. Still, in spite of that, there was some subtle shadow of life, with the knowledge that the mother I loved so much had been through what she had. In other words, there are families that don't have that kind of shadow. We had it, even though my mother tried not to say much about it. It was natural that her first husband's name would come up when she and her sisters talked about earlier life. When people tried not to mention his name, it was obvious someone was skirting the issue of his existence and death.

Also from my "island" is the simple reality that my existence did not stem directly from the death of the young Marine. While I would certainly not have existed had he not been killed, my mother (a young widow of 24) would likely have married someone else. Her choice to marry my father means that there were other factors in determining whether I would exist or not (to whatever my existence and my parents' happy family) would be considered "good".

If we consider each person's "island" viewpoint, from the viewpoint of her first husband there was no good that came from losing his life at 24. Someone could find the silver lining and say that he was spared a longer, sadder, life; or that he died feeling that he was doing what was right. Those are silver linings, though; and being killed at 24 generally offers no "good" to the person who no longer has a life in which to experience any good. There is never any good in violence, even when there may be a "legitimate reason" for it.

From my mother's "island", she went through her loss, picked up the pieces of her life and emotions, and moved past/around the horrible situation - much as we step over, walk around, or cross the street to avoid stepping in dog "muck" on the sidewalk. For all I know, she and her first husband could have become divorced if he had come home - and maybe I would still be here anyway.

Another view from my "island" is that when I was six years old my mother was hospitalized for seven months for a lung infection. Did any good come from a little girl being separated from her mother, or from a mother being separated from her three children (including a baby) for that long? No. My mother came away with left-over health issues that last for quite a while. Her baby son didn't know her very well when she came home. I "got to learn" that children and mothers can be yanked apart in this world, and I "got to learn" what it feels like to cry every night, afraid that my mother would die.

Did my mother make a few friends at the hospital? Sure, but after all had been sent home, they eventually lost touch with one another.

My sister-in-law and her husband lost their 20-month old toddler to an infection. From my "island", did any good whatsoever come from that in my life? No. Absolutely none. I learned that there is no depth to which "life" will not go in kicking its "participants" in the head; and I learned how to try to help my own young children to process the loss of their own young cousin; but those are all lessons best left unlearned by any heart or soul.

Suppose, however, we don't think in terms of how bad things affect life on any individual "island" (whether that's mine, my mother's, the young Marine's, my sister-in-law's, or anyone else's). Suppose we, instead, think of good coming from bad from the viewpoint of the larger world.

Did the larger world gain anything from the death of that 20-month-child? Does the larger world gain anything when mothers watch their own malnourished children starve to death in third world countries? Is it "good" that the numbers of impoverished, sick, and starving people are reduced because so many die their awful deaths? While silver linings in that horror may be that those who die no longer suffer or need to be fed, I see no good whatsoever from the horrors of such evil (even if that evil is not the calculated or twisted evil of a human being).

Some would say that good comes from bad when, for example, the parents of a tortured and murdered child do what they can to change laws or create awareness. Here again, however, it's more a matter of the parents choosing to create something positive out of the horror, rather than the crime "creating" good. No good whatsoever automatically comes out of such a horror. It is the parents, with this wish to fight back in some way and their wish to prevent similar horror to others, who decide to create some shred of good (or even something that makes a very substantial difference) out of something that was made of nothing but pure evil.

Might some parents' child's life be saved because of the actions of such grief-stricken parents of the child victims? Yes. On the other hand, does every horrible crime always lead to all families of all victims creating some version of good for others? No. Most such crimes result in dead, maimed, children and a life of sorrow and horrible images to fight for the rest of the lives of those who knew and loved them.

Then there are the questions of "meant to be" or "for a reason" (and both are kind of two sides to the same coin - destiny or "a giant plan"). I have no way to know if there is a giant plan, and if we don't have the free will that most us believe we do. If there's a giant plan, though, that would mean that whatever bad happens is not at the root of any good that comes later. Instead, both the bad and good were part of the giant plan. If there's a "giant, basic, plan" but within that we all have free will and choice, then that goes back to the points I made earlier about bad not always being the direct cause of good that follows.

If there is that "giant, basic, plan", it is at least possible that things that were meant to be may occur in spite of things that were not meant to be, simply because humans (or other Earthly factors) have not thrown off the whole plan, but only isolated parts of it.

Here are my examples of this line of thinking: When I was 20/21 I had a year and a half stretch that was bizarre in terms of horrible things happening in my life and close to me. My long-time, close, girlfriend's two brothers were in an accident with their friend. They were 15 and 16, and the friend was 16. The two older boys were killed, and the younger boy was severely burned. The boys were speeding, and hit a tree; but, of course, it was horrible in spite of their bad, teen, judgment.

Not long after that my best friend, our other friend, and I were hit by a drunk driver. My girlfriend was killed, and the other two of us were injured. I eventually returned to work; but the man for whom I worked (and a state employee, by the way) decided to take advantage of the fact that I had had a head injury (that didn't leave any permanent damage, by the way). Shortly after I returned to work, he attempted to make an inappropriate move. I headed for the door, and he blocked the door. Without a whole lot of struggle I did get out one of the doors and did not return to work the next day (or ever). He called and told me if I told anyone he would say that I was "f'd" in the head because of the head injury. I told him that because I liked his pregnant wife I would not say anything that would hurt her. The relevance of this will become clear shortly. I found another job and essentially built myself a new life and met new people.

"What a year," my remaining girlfriend and I thought. A few months later, that girlfriend (with whom I'd been close for years) lost her 17-year-old brother to leukemia, that was diagnosed one month and that killed him about a month later. All of these things so close were quite a bit for me, as a young woman, to process; and yet I continued to try to move on after each.

Three months after my friend's brother died, my father had a heart attack, was hospitalized for a month, and died. This was, of course, the horror of all horrors; and my mother, siblings and I were so shocked and "kicked in the head" I can't even find words to describe it. Because there is never much choice but to move on, we did our best to get through and move on.

Afraid of what the next horror may be, I did move on; and in time I was reasonably fine with having gone through that period that ended with my father's death. Life brought me to a baby who had been harmed in early infancy, and who needed a mother. While I can't say I would have done things differently without having had life make me so want "something bright and positive", I do know that the joy and sense of purpose of becoming his mother came in and replaced a lot of the "gray" with which I'd lived for so long. In that case, it seems that a lot of bad events and situations may have, at least, been partially responsible for the tremendous joy and sense of purpose that came with adopting my son. Did good come from all that bad in my life? Maybe. Did good come to my son from all the bad in his newborn life? Maybe. On the other hand, if there was some basic plan that we were to be part of one another's life, would that have happened anyway?

The same applies to the two children I had after adopting him. I met their father in that life that I'd built after leaving that job. It could be said that the thing with the supervisor was a matter of bad coming from bad. Again, though, if my family was meant to be under even some basic plan, would not we have become the family we did in spite drunk drivers and seedy bosses?

If some big plan was written at some time way in the beginning of the Universe (or before), then whatever happens - good or bad - has already been written, which means nothing occurs as result of something else (even though it may look that way to us). If we're Chess pieces in some higher power's game of Chess, whatever goes on would seem to depend on which moves such a higher power chooses, based on what is already on the board. It would seem that such a higher power would not need to rely on earlier board scenarios to accomplish any aims to bring good to any life.

If we're honest, we all know that none of us knows how a whole lot of this stuff works. It is fortunately in our nature and wisdom to be able to look for those silver linings, trust that there may a reason, and find ways to create good after bad has thrown our lives for a giant loop.
Through the process of learning to cope, deciding to have faith (or learning to find peace without faith), and seeing that we have somehow managed to muster up the strength to deal with the bad things in life; we usually do come out stronger and wiser people. Some might say we sometimes gain that strength and wisdom at the expense of giving up a life with that many fewer heartaches and sad memories. Some would say that this is growing up, and that growing up is always a kind of good that can come from bad.

As someone who, in spite of being so blessed with a wonderful family and childhood, as well as any number of other important things in life; was robbed of the chance to just be young for a while longer. From my "island" I can't say I see much good in knowing that I lost my one and only chance to be as young and carefree as so many other people get to be. I'm a tremendously fortunate and blessed person in so many important ways, and I'm generally a happy person. Still, I choose not to stretch the facts and try to attribute the good in my life to those bad things that happened, because I've seen that the truly important, meaningful, and good things in life tend to be bigger and stronger than things like drunk drivers, cholesterol, infections, and even armies. Just as most parents want their children to know that they were conceived in love (or at least not know that they weren't), I refuse to accept that what is truly good is ever conceived in what is bad (that often, didn't have to happen).

Aside from my own refusal to let the bad play a larger role in my life than it already has; after living approximately a half century, I am fairly convinced that all bad do not always bring about some good.

I would, however, like to end with yet one more (but more pleasant) personal story. In the 1980's the US government told parents they would need to get a social security number for each child listed on tax returns. I needed birth certificates for each child. My eldest son was in his early teens, and I had given the copies of his birth certificate that I had to people like the school and his Little League team. (His birth certificate had, of course, been altered at the time of his adoption.)

In any case, I called the city hall in the city in which he was born and requested a new copy. I don't know what month it was, although, with taxes due in April, there is the chance I called the city hall in March. I wasn't paying attention. Knowing me, however, there's also the chance that I called in February. Years earlier his adoption had been finalized in January.

When the birth certificate arrived I got the most eerie feeling, because there - up in the corner of the certificate - was the March date of the car accident that had left me sometimes wondering if there was some reason that I had lived through it. This hadn't been a fender bender that involved a freakish death. Anyone who looked at the wrecked remains of the cars wondered how anyone could have survived.

Whether or not the date on the certificate was a date from when I requested it, when the clerk's office typed it up; or even a date that had roots relating to the finalization, I'm don't know. I just know that when I opened that city hall envelope and saw that date I felt kind of numbed and "eerie" and kind of wanted to cry. When I think of my son ( the one who suffered a skull fracture in early infancy, the one born to someone deemed unfit), I have to say that sometimes good does come from bad. I have to say, too, that when it comes to answering questions like, "does some good always come from bad?", I don't think of any of us really has any foolproof answers.