Episode 15: People are Not Absolutes

[00:00:00] Seth: So I love the line from one of the Star Wars prequels. I think, I think this was the Phantom Menace. Oh, actually, no, it was, it was probably one of the later ones, but But anyways, I think Obi Wan Kenobi says to Anakin, he says, Only a Sith speaks in absolutes. And I don't think I'd ever considered before what an absolute was.

But it'd be, you know, effectively something that just is decisive. Something that is, encompasses the entirety of something. And so when, when we speak in absolutes, it's And sometimes it's as simple as saying he's a jerk, she's a bitch, they're selfish, oh he's amazing, or she's the nicest person. See there are a lot of descriptors we can use to describe a person, and when we say them it often sounds like we're stating a fact, just like that encompasses their entirety.

But if there's one thing that I've learned about people, it is that they are not monoliths and the truth is possibly that he's only a jerk to you because of some thing you do that bothers him or maybe she's just cranky because he hasn't had enough food to eat and maybe they're selfish because you're too blind to see that you've been wearing out your goodwill towards them And maybe that person that's amazing is amazing because you just don't know them that well.

And that girl that's just so nice, maybe it's just because she's got so much social anxiety that she won't tell you how she really feels. There have been a handful of people in my life that I have really, really disliked. But I cannot say that they were any one thing 100%. For many of them, I have only ever seen them in limited situations.

I don't know their thoughts, and I don't always know why they are doing a thing. And actually, the more I begin to understand a person, the more I come to realize what is really going on. And their behavior may still be unacceptable. Generally speaking, there's something behind it, and the people that we deify sometimes are just people, if you get to know them better.

And the people that we demonize are also people, and not 100 percent demons. We all have problems and none of us is anything absolutely. So I was a mediocre high school student. I mean, I guess I did okay. I didn't love school very much. I loved my friends, didn't love school. When I got to college, I made this commitment.

I told myself, you know, I'm actually going to study. I'm going to try to get the good grades. And consequently, I did while I was making that effort. It was a pretty beautiful lesson. You actually study, you will actually get good grades. So I made it something that I cared about. And consequently, I gained a reputation among some of my friends as a smart person because I had the high GPA and I was happy for the label and it made me feel good.

But it really was nothing more than a label as I had to actually make some serious effort to get those grades. And after like three semesters or so, I transferred to a different university. It was a little more prestigious with a, probably a higher bar for acceptance. I mean, not probably, definitely a higher bar for acceptance.

And I found out pretty quick that. The smart kid label did not apply that much to me at the new school. If anything, I was in the lower half of most of my classes. My confidence was crushed and so was part of my identity, but you know, it gave me a reality check and it was hard medicine, but it taught me something.

I am not anything absolutely. And what you think a person is, is, it's really just surface level. And you know, everybody, I love that line from Shrek where he's describing ogres and he says, ogres, ogres have layers. I'm not even gonna try to imitate the accent. It says ogres have layers like an onion and people do too.

There's so much to us. You Peel back that layer. There's another layer there. Peel back another one, and there's more. That's one of my favorite things about people. So, that aside, I've witnessed some pretty atrocious behavior from people, and I'm sure I thought at the time that they were a hundred percent pure evil, or something of the like.

Even still, most people, even some of the worst, are capable of kindness in certain situations. You know, one thing I've observed a lot with people is that some of the people with just the hottest tempers And some of the most unruly behavior are just complete bleeding hearts when it comes to animals. I don't know if it's like they see a kindred spirit and they sympathize with it or something to that effect, but there's so much more than meets the eyes.

And we're often blinded by what we want to believe. It's so easy to dismiss people for bad behavior, and it's easy to hate them. It's not easy to sit back and recognize that those people are more than just their negative qualities, and that a lot of those qualities are a result of maladaptive coping mechanisms.

Conversely, it's also easy to set a person on a pedestal only to be disappointed when we see some cracks. Now, I definitely believe that there are some people out there that are much more evil than good, but I do think we need to learn to let go of some of our oversimplifications when thinking about people, because people are not simple.

It's amazing how two people that once were close have even become enemies. at their best can sometimes get so caught up in the mental trap of only thinking about the other in terms that would only describe them at their worst. People are good. People are also bad. Most of us fall somewhere in between.

So maybe we can have just a little more sympathy. There's probably someone out there that It's only able to think of you at your worst. And I just hope that you don't fall into the same trap as them. And when it becomes such a tragedy is when those two people are married, or those two people were best friends at one point, or those people have like a, a real history where they've actually seen those other people at their best.

And granted some, you know, bad behaviors, bad behavior, and sometimes you can't. But I think we do a step further than that most of the time. It's not that we're just disappointed. It's just that we just want to hang on to that hate sometimes. See, people are funny. When they meet someone new that they like, they'll often act like they can hardly see anything wrong with them.

When they get in a fight with the same person, they can hardly see anything right about them. And sometimes we are just so caught up in the hurt that another person caused us that we can't let ourselves see past the descriptor we gave them. Because it would force us to recognize that maybe the level of our hatred isn't warranted.

I have fallen into this trap so many times it isn't funny. There are so many people that I have found myself disliking for any number of perceived slights, but at the end of the day I just have to remind myself that I don't know the whole picture. And when I do know the whole picture, and I still don't like them, at least that understanding of the person keeps me from hating them.

It's truly hard to hate a person when you know the whole picture. The hate will usually dissipate into disappointment at that point. You know, there was once a person that caused me a lot of pain in my life. It was also a situation where I couldn't really just walk away. So I was stuck in this place of living with serious resentment or finding some way to let it go.

To do that, I had to find a way to understand it. And that came in the form of recognizing that that person learned to be they were through an accumulation of events that did not necessarily have anything to do with me. And recognizing that to themselves they were making perfect sense, kind of makes it hard to hate them.

See, the more you really see another person, the harder it is to hate them. You And when you don't hate them, it makes them just a little bit more manageable, at least for yourself. I think we use these labels to justify our hatred. If you can minimize a person to a jerk, an idiot, a narcissist, an oppressor, or any other kind of label, it's easier to just hang on to your hate.

True as those labels may be, those labels are almost never the whole story. Because every single person has their own story, has many turns and sidesteps that you've never seen. So, bad behavior is inexcusable. And I'm not suggesting that we need to tolerate bad behavior. But I am suggesting that we should.

That you find a place of perspective, where you don't feel obligated to tolerate the bad behavior, but you also don't feel compelled to hate another person. If people were simple, they would be boring. Thankfully, they are not. People are what make this life amazing. All the good and the bad can build us up if we let it.

You're not God, and you don't need to decide whether or not people are jerks, or whether they are saints. Turn towards people that bring you more good than bad, and you'll probably be alright. If you're surrounded by people that make you unhappy, then start looking for people that don't. And just remember that just as you are growing and changing, so is everyone else, and we all will continue to do so until we die.