Moment of Happiness: Good vs Evil

Each morning when I come to work, I read a Moment of Happiness email from The Happiness Project.  Some days, like today, the quotes are so perfect and wonderful I can't help but share.  Today's, about the excitement of real "good" struck me.  It's true, isn't it?  In real life when things are "good" we are so happy and can handle the day to day.  In books, movies, and even some parts of real-life, though, we become absorbed with the evil.  The plot line of good vs. evil is so embedded in everything we know.  Yesterday I went to the beach for a few hours with some friends; in my bug-bitten, sunburned state I spent much of the rest of the 4th watching movies with my huz, and two situations arose in these movies that are perfectly reminiscent of those quote:

I honestly believe we are innately good, and that we sometimes make poor choices.  Of course, there are some jerks out there who make more poor choices than the rest of us, but for some part even those who make mistakes do so with some type of good intention.  I thought of this while watching "Glory" for a few minutes with my husband yesterday afternoon.  When I was a girl my honors US History teacher shared this movie with us, and it has always stuck with me.  Descriptions of the movie tell us it is about a white man dealing with prejudices of his troops during the Civil War.  It is much more than that, though.  It is about one man's struggle with making decisions about what is right, what is "good."  In one scene he has to make a decision about whether to flog a deserter.  He makes the wrong decision, but realizes it immediately and takes action to make it right.  Does his decision, then, make him "evil"?  Probably not, but it was certainly "exciting" entertainment for a movie.  We also watched a quirky indie movie called "The Perfect Family" yesterday.  In this movie, a mom's internal struggle with accepting her family for who they are, and her desire to be a perfect Catholic woman are witnessed.  She finds conflicts with her imagined reality, and her real reality.   Her actions to become a more religious, "perfect" mom almost destroy her family.
 
I wonder sometimes if because we have so many of these exciting, imagined examples in our lives, if it causes people to make more bad decisions.  I mean, since we watch so many movies, so many TV shows, read so many books... that are so exciting due to the nature of their "evil" characters conflicting with the "good characters," do some of us attempt those evil behaviors in order to gain more excitement in our lives?  And since, in the movies, the Nintendo effect takes over and we can start over without many repercussions from those actions, is there less understanding about consequences?
 
So, I'll leave you with this for today:  Try to make today a "good" day.  Let the that excitement take over, and let today be new, marvelous and intoxicating.