Things I Used to Believe
Getting your reality shattered is a scary thing. For me, it was like a midlife crisis at 21. Everything I’d known about the world seemed to be wrong and I was left trying to piece back together the shattered remains of my world.
I used to believe that people were all inherently good. I remember being asked this question as a sophomore in highschool and genuinely believing that all people were inherently good and that from circumstance they become misguided in the world. I don’t know why I felt that way. Maybe it was a result of my own circumstance. I’d grown up fairly sheltered and without much of a grasp on the world. I’d never encountered anyone “evil” or “bad.” So the bad people only existed in stories and I couldn’t help but feel like it was a result of circumstance that made them that way and that if they had a different run at life, they wouldn’t have turned out that way. And recently I’ve been changing my views about that while still trying to hang on to the rather hopeful belief about the world. And maybe it’s my hopelessly optimistic nature that these ideals come from but as I’m trying to piece back together my reality, I’m holding on to the belief that all people are inherently good. I used to have a set of standards that I thought everyone in the world met. I have been proven very wrong and I have been thrown into a pit of harsh reality. I’m trying to pull myself out without letting go of my optimism. I’m trying to be a little less trusting. I’m trying to be a little more cautious. I’m trying to be a little more realistic about the world.
