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Bad people, good people
Sometime ago, a child told me, “My Mama said Tita is bad. But I told Mama that Tita is not bad.” I told the child that “That’s good, because there’s a divine being in each and everyone of us.”
He asked, “How about Mama?” I told him that Mama is also like the rest of humanity – a beautiful child of God but at one time or another, experiences the same feelings of love, hate, jealousy, anger, sadness, greed, and more and make the same decisions and actions – right or wrong. All of us experience a struggle that we ourselves deal with in our own ways because we are all products of heredity, environment, and other life circumstances.”
I think it’s best that a child should grow up to always see the bright side and the good side of people and choose to forgive people for their shortcomings so that he or she will grow up an individual who views life in a positive manner and a person who is not judgmental.
It reminded me of a book entitled “The Logic of Life,” written by Tim Harford. He wrote that that no two people are exactly the same and no such thing as “extremely bad” or “extremely good” people. Thus, most people are not a saint and most are not the sons or daughters of the devil as well. We are all in the middle of the extremes, thus we cannot judge people as simply “good” or “bad.”
I agree with him. I think people simply make good or bad decisions or actions. A patient person at one time may be seen screaming at another time because of the pressures that he or she is facing at work or at home.
The “goodness” and “badness” of people amid us may also be caused by our own deeds. At one time or another, we meet “bad people” if we behaved badly ourselves and we meet “good people” if we behaved in a good manner ourselves. Try approaching a patient man and tell him that his mother is a whore, he’s probably get violent (bad action) with you especially when he’s in a bad mood.
Also a bad and good person depends on our judgment. If we don’t like a person, we judge that person as bad and we become blind to that person’s good qualities. A person we hate is the person whose words we do not trust, whether one has a point or not. And we usually hate the person who has what we don’t have.
If we are loyal to a person, we treat that person with patience despite his or her flaws. A person whom we are loyal to is given our trust, it doesn’t matter if one has a point or not. And we usually love the person who gives us what we want.
At the bottom of it all is the fact that we cannot know a person deeply based on our own judgment alone.
But if a person really insists that he or she is so good, enough to judge a person as “bad,” then perhaps we should be aware that teaching a child that a person is bad, is not the “good way” to go. I think every judgmental person could learn to “love mankind”, for in doing so, we get to meet more “good” people in our lives.
Perhaps, before we could look outside ourselves, we will try to check inwards and see that we are not so perfect ourselves. And if we want people to be good to us, we have to make changes and improvements in ourselves as well. But after all’s been said and done, the fact remains, “Who are we to judge?”
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Happy New Year to all our readers. I wish us all a life filled with love, peace, happiness, contentment, blessings, wisdom, increased faith in God and concern not only for our biological families, but also to our human family as well.
(Comments to katvillalon@yahoo.com. Visit my blog at http://www.kathyvillalon.blogspot.com)
