Who is the "good" witch?

Goodness is weighed in every decision we make. Is it good to interfere in a situation that does not require your help? Is it good to go against your family’s beliefs to pursue what you really want? Is it good to eat the last piece of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving? It doesn’t matter how important or serious these decisions are, but each time we choose to do something, we weigh whether it is good decision, consciously or not.

Goodness is defined by each individual’s values.  What is good to you might be different than the person sitting next to you. It might even be different than the you a couple years ago. Each individual’s definition of good is defined by their experiences and the influences in their lives. In a Tedtalk about morality, psychologist Jonathan Haidt talks about the moral roots of liberals and conservatives. He concluded that liberals are found to be more open-minded to change while conservatives tend to stick to more familiar situations that don’t create chaos. A liberal will think that their point of view is good and a conservative will think that their perspective is good. In some ways, they are both right because goodness requires a yin and yang; a balance between all perspectives in order to have a broader perspective of what is considered good.

I also think that goodness is very subjective. Take the story of Wicked. In the Wizard of Oz, Glinda is portrayed as the “good” witch and Alphaba is the “evil” witch. It’s easy for people to accept that fact and categorize both Alphaba and Glinda with the way they are presented, but when the story of Wicked, the prequel to the Wizard of Oz, came out people were able to see both Alphaba and Glinda in a different light. Now, people see Alphaba as the misunderstood and manipulated character and Glinda as the selfish and self-absorbed character. Because the audience’s perspectives were changed, they were able to see both stories of how these characters came to be, and make their own decision. Neither Glinda nor Alphaba are the “bad” witches because both of them demonstrate goodness in their actions, despite some of their flaws. The way the Wizard of Oz portrayed these characters as either the “bad” or the “good” witch influenced people’s perspectives and did not allow them the opportunity to choose the goodness is both of them.

Goodness is an abstract thought that requires a much broader perspective than a constricting definition. There is goodness everywhere we look and we think about it constantly throughout our days, even if we don’t consciously know it.