First Chances, Second Chances
I have been thinking a lot lately about the differences between how people handle personal crises and conflicts. It's interesting because almost everyone around me has told me the same thing about my own situation at the moment - and their advice ignores an important core element of my belief system: redemption and second chances.
See, I think there are certain people who are willing to invest trust in people from the beginning, giving them the benefit of the doubt. This requires a lot of faith in people as a whole, especially in such cynical times. Other people are willing to give people the opportunity to redeem themselves (should their crime be of such a nature as to require redemption), or simply give them a second chance to make things right. This also requires a great deal of faith in the inherent goodness in people - frequently, these believers in redemption get taken advantage of time after time.
Unfortunately, though, I think that a great deal of people are willing to do neither; they suspect people's intentions from the onset and are unwilling to give people a second chance when they mess up just once.
This observation comes with no assessment of what this means in the grand scheme of things, nor with any advice as to what people should be willing or unwilling to do. I simply note that these conditions exist and allow many people the opportunity to find something great in their lives when others would close their eyes, hoping that blindness would let them see no evil.
I spent a good deal of my life blindly giving faith to everyone I met and giving them second chances and third chances and fourth chances. After years of people that I called "friends " abusing that faith, I'm now weary of people I have never met, though not to the point of outright suspicion or questioning their intentions; it simply takes me longer to give them my full trust - and few people even now have that.
However, despite my reservations in new encounters, I am still willing to look past mistakes and poor choices - or even choices that are to some extent malicious - and allow for the possibility of righting those wrongs. Because, by my nature, I am a hopeful person. And if you aren't willing to have faith that people who do bad things can still be good people, you sabotage hope and you sabotage your relationships.
Eventually, you sabotage your own happiness.
People fuck up and that's life. That's how it goes. Mistakes are made all the time. You can regret them, you can wish you never made them, but it doesn't change the fact that they happened. But the hope in those situations is that you can move on and become a better person for them.
See, I think there are certain people who are willing to invest trust in people from the beginning, giving them the benefit of the doubt. This requires a lot of faith in people as a whole, especially in such cynical times. Other people are willing to give people the opportunity to redeem themselves (should their crime be of such a nature as to require redemption), or simply give them a second chance to make things right. This also requires a great deal of faith in the inherent goodness in people - frequently, these believers in redemption get taken advantage of time after time.
Unfortunately, though, I think that a great deal of people are willing to do neither; they suspect people's intentions from the onset and are unwilling to give people a second chance when they mess up just once.
This observation comes with no assessment of what this means in the grand scheme of things, nor with any advice as to what people should be willing or unwilling to do. I simply note that these conditions exist and allow many people the opportunity to find something great in their lives when others would close their eyes, hoping that blindness would let them see no evil.
I spent a good deal of my life blindly giving faith to everyone I met and giving them second chances and third chances and fourth chances. After years of people that I called "friends " abusing that faith, I'm now weary of people I have never met, though not to the point of outright suspicion or questioning their intentions; it simply takes me longer to give them my full trust - and few people even now have that.
However, despite my reservations in new encounters, I am still willing to look past mistakes and poor choices - or even choices that are to some extent malicious - and allow for the possibility of righting those wrongs. Because, by my nature, I am a hopeful person. And if you aren't willing to have faith that people who do bad things can still be good people, you sabotage hope and you sabotage your relationships.
Eventually, you sabotage your own happiness.
People fuck up and that's life. That's how it goes. Mistakes are made all the time. You can regret them, you can wish you never made them, but it doesn't change the fact that they happened. But the hope in those situations is that you can move on and become a better person for them.
posted by Dave at 3:04:00 PM
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