Goodwill

With goodwill, people can fly. Without goodwill, they can die. It’s hard to define something as intangible as goodwill, but below are some possible definitions.

• Having a friendly attitude towards something/someone
• Giving someone your support and approval
• Cooperation
• Benevolence
• Compassion

Perhaps describing goodwill in action will sharpen the picture. How about this…

For all the authority and power someone possesses; for all the rules and regulations an organisation uses to back up its claims; for all the legitimacy and rights a group relies on to do what it does; for all the laws and legislations a court uses to implement justice… none of it means anything without goodwill.

Gods, leaders, governments, companies, products and policies all come and go when there is and then there isn’t enough conviction to sustain them.

You may think you’re in a relationship with someone, but unless there’s ongoing goodwill on both sides, the relationship will cease to exist – even if you’re still together in a non-relationship relationship.

You may think someone avoided/received a prison sentence because of justice doing its job, in some colour-by-numbers scientific kind of way. Yet once you factor in all the arbitrary and random elements that make us human, you might see that decisions, harsh or lenient, can ultimately come down to goodwill, can come down to a cup of coffee that was drunk or left untouched in the morning, the clothes the defendant wore or could have worn to give them a better/worse outcome.

What do you make of these notions? If this topic interests you in any way, there’s a whole field of learning called phenomenology that may stimulate you further.