Even Problematic Humans Deserve Love
Ever since the election, I’ve consumed far less news and news-adjacent content. It’s a decision I had to make for my mental health after noticing a direct correlation between the amount of time I was spending reading news and hot takes and the length and severity of my anxiety spells and depressive episodes. Recently, I’ve come up with another reason to avoid this type of content: I realized that it makes it much harder for me to see people as human beings and much more likely that I will reduce a person’s entire humanity down to one or two opinions that I either fully agree with or fully detest.
I didn’t think much about this until my recent concussion. Even though it was a mild head injury, during my early recovery I started having visions of more constructively handling encounters with people whose worldview I disagree with or even find threatening. It occurred to me that I was bringing a lot of judgment into these encounters, whether they were happening in person or as a result of hearing or reading about a person or something they said or did; I was deciding that the entire person was good or bad based on an opinion or behavior.
Reality is messy and complicated. I like to think of myself as a good person, but I’ve messed up in all kinds of ways big and small throughout my life. I have done things that are outside my values, and I have hurt people I love as well as people I didn’t even know that well. Many folks who consider themselves good people have made similar mistakes. So what’s the difference between a bad person and someone who has made terrible mistakes?
For one thing, I’ve realized that it’s not my place to say who is “good” or “bad”, and that’s not a productive or meaningful way to look at the world anyway. No one is all good or all bad. We are human; we are inherently flawed, and yet we can strive to be better. What I do think is true, however, is that I can have beliefs and opinions about right versus wrong - for example, it’s right to stand up for someone who’s being bullied, it’s wrong to hurt people on purpose - and I can create and maintain boundaries between myself and others for psychological safety, all without making some kind of evaluation or judgment about a person’s goodness.
People who mess up bigtime are still human beings. They have stories and circumstances that led them to where they are now. They have pain and trauma, just like us. Maybe we didn’t handle our circumstances the way they did; maybe we handled things better or less destructively. Instead of feeling a rush of self-righteous indignation when someone else does something I think is terrible, I’m trying to channel my feelings into boundaried compassion.
Here’s how this looks:
Instead of saying to myself, “I cannot believe they did that. What an awful person. I would never do something like that,” I’m now trying to say, “I am so disappointed in the choice that person made. It’s against my values and seems harmful to others. I will not behave like that, and I won’t accept that kind of behavior in my close relationships. Whatever pain and suffering that person experienced that led them to where they are today, I hope there comes a time when they can make different choices.”
Yes, I know the world is on fire. I know there are all kinds of bad actors with malicious intent who are deliberately inflicting pain and harm on innocent people. The problem is, these folks don’t see those they are trying to harm as human beings, instead reducing their humanity to a set of talking points about their identities, beliefs, or opinions that they’ve decided are “bad”. It’s dehumanizing. So if I participate in this kind of dehumanization too, how am I making the problem better? While I might be on the “right” side of an issue, I’m not doing anything to reduce the amount of dehumanization in the world.
It’s not really about whether someone deserves to be judged as “good” or “bad”; it’s more about what kind of person I want to be and what kind of energy I want to put out into the world.
