The word “good” can mean many things. It can mean the soup is tasty, that I can play ball well, or that I didn’t cheat on my diet over yuntif. But tov is not just good, it’s literally out of this world.
Hashem is pure tov, and He created an entire world just to share His tov – Himself – with us. Every mitzvah we do, every word of Torah we read, every time we remember that Hashem is here, is tov that’s all ours, for eternity. Not only that, but He also put His tov into us – each one of us is a “chelek Eloka mima’al.”
That means that we’re capable of connecting to Hashem and even becoming like Hashem. It also means that, even when we fail miserably to do those things, we are still holy and beloved to Hashem. We might have done bad and feel like we’re terrible, but even then, we’re still tov. And that goes for other people, too. I might not be able to see anything good in someone, but I need to recognize the tov in them.
