I’ve mentioned a couple of times before that I have a blind spot when it comes to evil intentions, and that it always catches me off-guard when people don’t want to improve themselves. I do understand that this says something about me that isn’t entirely complimentary: I am naïve.
I’ve always thought of myself as being a walking contradiction. I am either the absolute laziest type A personality or the most motivated slacker I know. Similarly I’ve always thought of myself as being a pretty solid pessimist, but it turns out I’m pretty damn optimistic as pessimists go. I typically believe that everything that can go wrong will go wrong, and we’ll somehow get through it anyway.
I believe it’s that hidden optimism that contributes to my naïveté. I want to see the best in people. As a young adult I was scheduled to take the New York City Police exam, but after paying more attention to the NYPD cops that I knew, I saw that I didn’t want to become like them. It was their literal job to deal with people who were at their worst, and so they came to see that as the totality of who a person was. It’s no exaggeration to say that while they may have trusted the people in their immediate circle, they grew to, if not despise almost everybody else, then to at least be suspicious of them. Focusing on the bad in people is not a good way to live. It makes the world a small and scary place and turns one into a small-minded and frightened person. I decided I didn’t want to live that way. I skipped out on taking the test. I didn’t want to see the worst in people all the time.
I made a conscious decision to try to lead a more positive life. I started to focus more on the good in people, including myself. We all have a dark side, but as I’ve said before I like to believe in the redemption arc. I like to believe that we can improve ourselves. Part of that means giving people the opportunity to do so. That may mean focusing on the good in someone even when their faults are in plain sight. It may mean not seeing their faults until it’s loo late. It definitely means that sometimes people will take advantage of you or let you down. C’est la vie.
So yes, I am naïve, but I think I am consciously so. I feel like it’s a small price to pay when the reward is living in a world where people can get better and are able to grow beyond the worst thing they may have done.