People who know me well hear this almost daily. I am a firm believer that 99% of the people in the world, deep down, are good people. Most people we encounter have good intentions, even if those intentions are misguided. Our past experiences shape who we are and our outlook on life. Negative, unapologetic, and even malicious individuals at some point in their lives were not that way. For some, you have to go way back to the earliest points of their childhood to understand where things might have gone wrong.

I know that there are outliers and some folks are just bad people, pure evil. Not many people fall in this category though. Not as many as are portrayed in the news media on a daily basis.

The reason I believe that 99% of people in this world are or were good at some point, is because I choose to live my life the glass half full. Some don’t agree with this viewpoint, and once again, their viewpoints are shaped by past experiences, people they have encountered, and situations that they have been presented with.

I am not saying that choosing to live this way is easy because it’s hard. We live in an imaginary spotlight constructed in our own minds and judge ourselves by our good intentions. The reason it’s hard to believe most others have the same good intentions is that more often than not we are judged by our last worst act.

I think that domestic politics and foreign affairs, coupled with the pandemic and a looming recession have caused many people to be more pessimistic than they ever have been before. It is disheartening. We are constantly bombarded with headlines that highlight our disagreements and differences. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that we can have disagreements and differing viewpoints openly and publicly is what makes our country great. But we need to find a better way to have that discourse.

How do we become more optimistic? It’s easy.

We need to give people the benefit of the doubt…
We need to cut people some slack…
We need to forgive people for not knowing what they don’t know…
We can hold people accountable while simultaneously not dehumanizing them…

We don’t give anyone a break anymore. Why not?

We are human beings. We are all broken in some way. We are all messed up to a certain extent. This doesn’t mean that people can’t be assholes. It doesn’t mean you have to like everyone. It doesn’t mean you can’t hate how others live their lives.

Having the right intentions means that no matter what our differences are we can still acknowledge the miracle in the soul standing across from us, and recognize that others exist and are worthy of existing. If we could all strive to have that mindset, the world would be a better place.