A Heart of Gold. Or Stone.

I think it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway. Most of us are not very good at judging other people. Let me explain with some examples from my teaching days. They are mostly true, with just a bit of exaggeration to make a point.

I once knew a guy (we’ll call him Mr. Smith) who was not a nice person. We all knew it. I have no idea why, but he was nasty to everyone. He was selfish, arrogant, critical of others, and never took the blame for anything (because of course HE was never wrong). While he was no genius himself, he tended to put everyone else down. You know the type. Well, one day a kid was stuck at school with no ride home after all the practices were done. Mr. Smith actually went out of his way to give the kid a ride home (which others of us did routinely). The next day some people were saying “I always though Mr. Smith was a jerk. But he gave that kid a ride home. He even went out of his way to do it. Deep down inside, he’s really a nice guy.

That’s fair enough I guess. During crunch time, Mr. Smith did the right thing.

Then there’s Mr. Jones. He’s almost always good to other people, doesn’t criticize, always does his best to be fair and decent. He’s humble and caring. You know the type. One day his temper got the better of him and he was really nasty to a kid. He dressed the kid down in front of his class, when he really shouldn’t have. So what were some of these same people saying now? “You know Mr. Jones always comes across as a nice guy. But he treated that kid really bad. Deep down inside, he’s really a jerk. He just hides it well most of the time.”

I’m exaggerating a bit, but not too much. I see this happen all the time. A lot of it has to do with timing, (What have you done for me lately?) We tend to remember the most recent thing about a person.

But it also depends on what we WANT to think about someone. Mr. Smith had a small group of influential kids who liked him, so everyone else WANTED to like him. This gave them a (very bad) reason to do that. But it shouldn't have. We shouldn't let insignificant things define our opinion of someone.

We do this in family, career, and politics. And it costs us. We can't choose our family, so of course we do our best to see the good in them. But for others, we owe it to ourselves to judge fairly.

Yet for many of us, even when almost every single thing we see tells us a particular person is a bad person, we allow ourselves to believe that "deep down inside, he or she is a good person." Because for some reason we want to believe that. I understand about "seeing the best in a person." I really do. But we also have to be realistic.

We should know better. But many don't.