It's you... Not Me

Usually, when the concept of good comes up in my mind, I immediately gravitate towards my first encounter with Plato's Good in the Parmenides. At times, I think about how difficult and convoluted our discussion of good becomes when we are attempting to be philosophical. Everyone knows what good is... and dammit! There's no need for philosophy spending time just to confuse people as to what they know they mean when they describe something as being 'good.' Right?
Now I'm not so sure (at least, tonight I'm not).
I was lamenting to my dad the other day how so many people take their lives and make such obvious mistakes, only to later complain that they haven't gotten any further today than they were yesterday (or yesteryear). The mistakes are obvious to me and obvious to others, but not obvious to the person who is making them.
It seems that the same thing happens with the good things in life. You live a good life, you are surrounded by good things, and nothing is standing in your way of continuing to experience good things; except you don't see it that way.
Things are bad. Things suck. Things haven't gone the way you planned.
And that seems to be the crux; things haven't gone the way you planned. Does that mean they've necessarily gone poorly and are thus, devoid of the good? To me, no. To you, yes. Amazing.
I find people's insistence on things going their way being the path to good frustrating. Not to say my life is perfect and I'm not misguided from time to time, but I'll speak anecdotally.
I have been working as a manager (of different sorts) for over eight years. That means that not only am I responsible for the tasks assigned to me, but also for making sure those who work for me are also fulfilling theirs. In other words, it is not only that my day runs smoothly that I need to think about, but also that those who depend on me for guidance are guided towards the path to successfully achieving their duties. Rare is a day that I walk into the office in the morning and walk out in the evening with more than one item on my never ending to-do list finished. I only can guess what will actually happen to me during the course the ten hours I find myself at work. Inevitably, something comes up that needs immediate attention. It is always something that I didn't plan for and will take more than a few short moments to handle. By the time two or three of those somethings happen, I find the clock nearing 3 or 4 in the afternoon, with little time left to get into anything significant. So, by the time I leave, if I have accomplished one thing on the list, I am lucky.
Nothing happens as planned and as long as I didn't cause any more catastrophes to happen, I feel like the day went well. I'm usually exhausted, but I can leave the office knowing that all is good and we'll start tomorrow hoping for a bit more success and, perhaps, less interruption. They never do.
Things rarely go as planned. Yet, I consider most of my days to have been good ones.
I understand why philosophy wants treatises on the good. We want a roadmap to defining whether or not the things you encounter and the life you are living is good. We want to know when to smile. (O-o kaaayyy... 3, 2, 1... SMILE!)
Unfortunately, good seems to be so very dependent upon your ability to see it. If you don't want to accept that you've got it good, then there's no use in reading the treatise because you'll think the author is talking about something other than what you know and experience.
Every language of which I have a coarse understanding has a translation for seeing the world through rose colored glasses (or lenses). It appears to me that noticing the good is subject to the very same thing. Some see the good and some don't - whether or not they're wearing glasses - of any tint.
My heart goes out to those that don't... because they won't... and not because it doesn't exist.

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