How Bad Is Bad?

The adjective "bad" is a relative term. Your "bad" may not be my "bad". Basically, it is an adjective to describe the relative state of a following noun. In brief, "bad" for a person with high tolerance would probably mean "extremely bad", "fatal", "suicidal" etc for another with a lower capacity. This leads to my next point - in a serious conversation, especially with pals in trouble, ask them to describe their bad situations to know just how terrible they've been. If the listeners were to impose their definitions of "bad" to what the speakers had said, the former may miss vital points in the dialogues.

Let me give an example. X has been missing his bank dues for many months, such that the bank had sent him a legal letter to demand for full payment, or else, he risks paying additional hundreds for the legal & late-payment fees. X also owes a friend a few hundreds and his friend has been urging very fervently for X to repay. If X pays his friend instead of the bank (assuming the amounts are the same), X would incur additional hundreds in debts (to the bank) as per legal-letter demand. If X pays the banks, he clears an outstanding liability and lowers his overall debt. However, his friend would be angry and might think he's an ingrate. So X approached his friend to tell him his predicament, but his friend misinterpreted the "bad" situation as a case of priority payment (i.e. paying something of the same amount to another creditor of a higher priority), and became sore about it.

What would you have done if you were X's friend? For me, I'd first want to know how bad is "bad" for him, and judge after hearing. For the above example, I'd be glad that X came and told me, and I'd let him make the more prudent payment, i.e. the bank, at least for this time round.