HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN IDIOT AND A TERRIBLE PERSON

or How To Accept That The World Is Just As Flawed As You Are

Something happened to us.

I’m not sure exactly when but I’m going to guess it was around the time that US politics went from “ha ha” to “ha… holy fuck”. That was the time when politics seemed to lay claim to “right” and “wrong” instead of just “fiscal policy” and “other boring politicky stuff”.

That period of time made people’s choices seem much more character defining.

Then there was the pandemic.
Which really could have just been reduced to a shirts versus skins game.

A fabulous quote by Maya Angelou makes the rounds constantly…
“When people show you who they are, believe them.”

This is excellent advice.
It is invaluable advice when gauging someone’s character.
It is also the cause of a lot of problems lately.

Maya Angelou’s advice is sound… iron clad… irrefutably true.
Our interpretation of it is a bit shit sometimes.

People are not perfect.
What they say is not who they are… unless they say it all the time.
What they do is not who they are… unless they do it all the time.

Mistakes do not define the person.
Mistakes acknowledged but unaddressed do.

The past number of years has made us all too quick to cut people out of our lives for things they’ve said and/or done or not done.
Some of those people are trash. Good riddance.
Some of those people are still good people and we’re poorer for their absence.

We need to give people a chance again.
We need to realize not everyone will get everything right all the time.
We need to realize that we can have relationships (I don’t mean the sexy type) with people in some areas of our lives and not in others.

(Watch your feet, heavy name dropping) Henry Winkler told me I should be giving people mahogany not paper when I write, so in an effort to make this really clear… here goes.

Those people that were scared of the vaccine?
Not all terrible people.

Those people that voted for Trump?
Not all terrible people.

That guy who made the homophobic remarks at the party I was at last weekend?
Not a terrible person. Just an idiot who needs to be called on his idiot words.

This is true for all of us.

I’m not saying forgive and forget.
I’m not even saying turn the other cheek.
I’m saying we need to stop writing people off at the first sign of being an idiot.
Sometimes they’re not terrible people… they’re just idiots.

Unless they show you they’re terrible people by repeatedly doing and saying terrible things.
Then, exactly as Maya Angelou said, believe them.

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(Pictured: Author sips his Tahiti Treat while pondering about which of the terrible people in his life are actually just idiots)

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