Breaking Good

        So I guess the yang to the yin of "Breaking Bad" would be "My Name Is Earl,"  another television  show I once had a brief but intense fling with.
        The story line of this show centered around a luckless bottom-feeder named Earl Hickey  who is hit by a car and while lying in a hospital bed watching a TV show about karmic retribution decides to turn his life around.  From then on his life's calling becomes to right every wrong he's ever done to anyone. 

break good  (brak gud)  1. To do a good deed, say a kind word, or engage in some other form of admirable behavior that sharply contrasts with one's typical or expected offensive  behavior.  2. To turn one's life around for the better.
        
      (That's as close a definition as I can come up with in a few words).  
      Breaking good is a bit more complicated than breaking bad.  
      Because, as Earl discovered, once you've  acquired a nasty reputation people are slow to accept, if they ever accept at all,  that you might actually be capable of good intentions.  Especially those people who were hurt or offended by your former words or deeds.  
           We don't like  bad things happening  to good people;  we're likewise not particularly crazy about good things happening to bad people.  Ditto hearing that people we've decided are bad have been caught doing good things.
          Because once we've formed a negative opinion about a person on a personal  level, whether the person has offended us or just rubbed our sensibilities the wrong way by their behavior,  we tend to have scant  interest in seeing our negative opinion negated.  When we've sentenced a person to the dark side in our mind we have no desire to see them cast in a positive light.  After  we've categorized and boxed someone in they sometimes have to punch long and hard at the walls before we'll let them out.  If we're big enough to ever even let them out.
        On the other hand, as Earl also learned, an apology and an act of generosity are always always  good first steps.