Graphic by Katie Grace Upchurch
Freshman and Journalism I student Isabella Johnson shares how her perspective on the goodness of people has affected her life and experiences. She believes it is important to having good interactions with others.
I believe in people. I believe that people aren’t inherently evil. I believe that everyone is a product of their environment.
Environments that people come from shape who they are. They can have hardships that cause them to have a bitter exterior. They can have hardships that lead them to appreciate kindness. It could be the opposite too. Having an easy life could make people unable to see the need to support or be kind to others. Or it could teach them to help bring others up.
People often tell me that I’m too nice. That I let people take advantage of me. And when they say that, I feel bad for them.
It’s not that I’m too nice, it’s that I don’t mind giving someone a dollar. The happiness of that person in that moment is worth more than whatever I could have bought with it. Seeing them smile and get what they need or want is worth more than a chocolate bar. Being able to help them is so much more gratifying than buying something little that I don’t need.
It’s not that people take advantage of me, it’s that I care more about people than things. Because people are good. They’re a whole person with interests and a family and goals and passions and pet peeves. That’s hard for some people to fully realize. Everyone has busy lives, and sometimes it’s a struggle to see past themselves.
Everyone has so much going on beyond what you can see of their lives. Being rude when someone asks for something or getting annoyed when someone fails at something just doesn’t make sense to me.
Part of my strong belief in the goodness of people has come from my mother. She’s a teacher, and she teaches students coming from some of the worst home situations. These kids are expected to act well all day despite what they’re going through. She’s taught me about understanding that you don’t know what’s going on in other people’s lives, and about coming at situations with an open mind. Looking at the other person’s perspective can take an interaction from conflict to a meaningful conversation.
I believe that kindness costs nothing. That being nice to people, smiling at them, reassuring them, is worth it. It makes me feel better, so it’s not giving without receiving.
High school is a stressful time. Students are stuck in a building full of overworked and overtired classmates. Plenty of people who don’t want to be there. It can be hard to be happy about what’s happening, and that’s why I believe in people.
In a brick building full of complaints and stress, people still run to get the door for others. People jump up to lend out their chargers. There’s a kid in my gym class who stands to hold the door open the whole time people come to class. One club set up a system of people who volunteered to tutor people in classes they did well in for free, just to help support them. There’s an advisement I tutor in where students help native speakers who don’t know English well with their school work. All the students are doing it solely for the purpose of being helpful.
It’s not that these people have amazing lives that lead them to be happy enough to be kind.
It’s that they realize that something would help someone else, and they want to do it.
It really bothers me when people think that all people are bad, just because many are. I’m guilty of saying, “People suck,” when a group of people does something awful, but I don’t truly think that. People can do bad things, they can do the wrong things, but at the end of the day, they’re just people. Not inherently bad, not inherently anything, but people.
In the right circumstances, anyone could act like a saint or a villain. Treating people with a respectful, open mind is a huge step to making the right one for people around you to be kind. Being nice doesn’t have to be an opening to be taken advantage of, it can be an opening to allow others to be nice back.
