No Good Will Come of It by Lewis

“No good will come of it,” usually prefaced by “believe me,” is a line I don’t believe I have ever used in ordinary conversation. I have read the line in books, heard it voiced on the silver screen or from a stage, and can imagine it spoken by a finger-wagging false prophet from an obscure pulpit or a domineering parent in an American backwater community. Typically, in my experience, the person to whom such an admonition is directed would proceed to do the very thing against which he or she has been warned, presumably motivated by the realization that the odds that said act would result in an outcome that the doer was hoping for have been measurably increased. 

In 99% of life’s daily situations, to announce as fact the conviction that doing act ‘a’ will inevitably lead to result ‘b’--‘b’ being shorthand for “bad”—is a presumption scarcely justified by the vast convolutions of possibility that life throws at us. Even to say to a person who has a cocked and loaded gun at their temple, “If you pull that trigger, no good will come of it,” may not be true in the opinion of everyone who knows the poor despondent in question. Or, the gun may misfire, in which case the owner at least knows not to rely on that particular weapon for protection against intruders.

If I were to say to you, as you are about to set fire to a stock certificate worth $10 million, “Surely, no good will come of that,” again, I would be liar, because its demise would mean that the value of every other shareholders holdings would thereby be increased.

Tell someone who is addicted that to imbibe would surely lead to no good, and they might respond, “But at least, I’ll feel better for awhile.”

Tell that to the boy who is about to throw the pet cat into a bathtub full of water and he might well answer, “But it’s funny.”

Tell the husband or wife who is about to have a fling with a third party and they might tell you to mind your own business.

In short, hardly anything good can come from saying to someone, “No good will come of it.” Either you may well lose the love or respect of your friend or you will prove to have been wrong. A better approach would be to express what, in your mind, the consequences of doing such-and-such will be and those consequences had better be ones over which you have control, such as “I will never speak to you again” (and mean it). This kind of trade-off the person you are admonishing can understand and actually has a chance of influencing their behavior.

© 5 May 2013

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn't getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.

Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband's home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.