A good place to start
God made us human beings in His image and likeness and I must respect the God in every person.
At a lovely lunch with an old friend, he recalled a dear departed common friend who said, “Every person starts out by wanting to do good.” We were just talking about how bad thing are in the country, so I was stunned.
Everyone starts from the good. What a concept! Then what happens? Life happens. Reality sets in. Survival is all.
When we encounter people for the first time, they come with their personal histories, a grab bag of everything they have done and become over the years. We may like what we see, we may recognize the goodness in them, and resonate with them immediately. We may empathize with a person’s unfortunate life experiences before we met, or we may be repelled by what has become of him.
We meet people as they are — halos, warts and all. We are told to love our neighbor, but our judgement tends to be quick. Sometimes, instinctively, we resist a person we just met. Something about him just doesn’t feel right. He or she may be the most beautiful, charming, brilliant or powerful person in the room, but we would rather keep away. Then there are others who are unassuming, not calling attention to themselves, but have a glow about them that attracts people. I tend to want to hover around such personalities.
My judgement, hasty as it may be, is often accurate. Instinctively, I recognize insincerity, lechery, opportunism and the like almost immediately. But I have also been wrong and have suffered for it. You must have had similar experiences.
A friend I met at work was so delightful — he was friendly, chatty and bitchy. He hovered at my desk, brought me little presents, fed me with gossip about everyone around. We had meals together, watched plays, movies, laughed lot and bitched a lot. A perfect “girlfriend.”. Until I learned that he was also talking about me behind my back!
Another person I met at a conference abroad became a fast friend. We talked late into the night sharing our life stories, which were similar and sighed and laughed at our misery over bottles of beer. When we got back to Manila, however, my life story came back to me, with some enhancement, through a third person! What a betrayal. I have never spoken to her again.
When people share their life stories with me, I assume they were told in confidence. These stories, juicy as they may be, are not mine to share. They are not fodder for gossip, at least not from me. So when someone violates my confidence by re-telling things I told them in confidence, I tend to be unforgiving. Wouldn’t you be?
People come and go in our lives. Friends, relatives, neighbors. Some will be our trusted forever friends. Other will fall by the wayside, unworthy of our time and effort. There are also our local and national leaders whom we elect or reject based on our instincts for good and evil. Some of them get elected and restore our faith in human kind, but there are others who drive us to despair. Often, when an administration finally ends, we bid it good riddance to bad rubbish and we usher in a new one with hopes and dreams of a better future, only to be disappointed once again. The phrase “never again” has become too commonly used in our life and times.
So when I am reminded by a wise and thoughtful friend that every person starts out by wanting to do good and that every person has some good in him or her, I must take pause. The good in me, or what’s left of it, tells me to give everyone a chance to show his or her good side. But that can be a tall order, especially when the bad side outweighs the good. I have lived long enough to know when I’m being taken or a ride.
Still I must remind myself that God made us human beings in His image and likeness, and I must respect the God in every person. That’s a good place to start. But it is up to every person to develop what is God-like in him or her. And that is when things begin to look iffy.
