People are not bad, situations are
From the day we are born, we start judging and categorizing people around us as good or bad. That’s how our animal brain works to keep us away from dangers and increase our chances of survival. Depending on the behavior of the other person, we start labeling them as good or bad, which I feel is not completely correct. Situations or the externalities do play an important role here.
We as human beings aren’t perfect and to be honest, we can’t be. If everyone becomes perfect, then our society will collapse (I’ll discuss this in detail some other day). Since we aren’t perfect, failures are bound to happen. There will days when a person will not behave or react as we expect them to which means conflicts will happen. Arguments will be there and the so-called “negative” emotions will come. And as soon these negative emotions will come, a state of uncertainty will arise and our brain will try to do everything to make sure that we attain certainty.
In this process, it will start labeling people as good or bad / friends or foes / safe or risk, and once labeled our behaviors will change accordingly.
But if you look closely, it’s actually these “bad” people or the “risks” that are helping you to move away from a state of imperfection to a state of perfection. The only reason your mind labeled them as bad was because it found itself in a situation that it hadn’t seen before. If these people had not been there, then we would have probably remained in the same state and never experienced the higher state of evolution. Think of them as bitter medicines or bland food which you have to eat for your own good. These people are actually teachers that try to teach US something even when they know that WE will not even care about them or call them bad.
So I feel that once the miserable times pass, we should try to look back and retrospect to understand what did actually happen. Were the people really bad or it were the situations? This is obviously not an easy task to do as 1) you will have to re-look at everything from a third person’s lens and 2) in the end you may find yourself guilty/wrong and no one likes being wrong.
Taking about my life experiences, I would say that there have been multiple instances where I had considered someone as bad but with a better perspective, everything changed. After that I tried to make things normal, sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. But the realization and effort were in itself good for me. If you are one such person whom I had treated badly at some time in the past, then I am really sorry for that and truly grateful that you helped me in becoming a better person.
Also, just because it’s happening for our own good, it doesn’t mean that we let ourselves being mistreated continuously . One will have to obviously think consciously to see when learning starts happening at the cost of exploitation.
The things that I mentioned may not hold true for some situations like life/death conditions of wars or some sort of crimes or any kind of abuse(physical/mental). In conditions like that, once you get some learning , the goal should be to not go back in similar situations again. You can be still thankful to those hard times and bad people for helping you evolve and build a better understanding of life. Holding grudges may seem like a helpful thing but these are still negative emotions that we keep within ourselves which will ultimately impact us.
Just let it go, learn from experiences & leave the rest upon KARMA
“To know all, is to forgive all.” — Quentin Crisp
It’s not always about being right or wrong about someone, but it’s more about understanding why people do what they do.
