Despite a Thousand Disappointments, I Still Believe in Good People
There are still honest, responsible, sincere, friendly, capable, caring, sensible, and respectful people in the world. There are still people who distance themselves from bitterness, selfishness, hypocrisy, hubris, and the disappointments of society.
They are people who comfort us and make us believe that humanity is not lost. They help us to recover our faith in the possibility of rebuilding a world corrupted by self-interest, lies, and falsehoods.
They look kind, attentive, and humble, but they don’t even realize this about themselves. They don’t know that they represent everything that makes us happy. They don’t know how important they are, down to the smallest details.
“How wonderful it is that nobody needs to wait a single moment before beginning to make the world a better place.”
-Anne Frank-
What we learn from good people
Wonderful people do not only offer us smiles, comfort, and happiness. They also offer us beautiful memories that become life lessons through our emotional experiences.
Thankfully, we cross their paths, and we learn that good actions are worth more than good intentions. We learn that what we offer to others always comes back to us multiplied. All things considered, we also learn that the best reward is that which can be found within.
Life is not stability, but rather knowing how to walk with balance. To be able to do this, we must feel good about who we are. The only option we have is to reject cruel intentions and figure out how to learn from our negative emotions.
Educating emotions, educating kindness
The fact that we don’t always have good intentions and positive feelings does not make us bad people. It makes us normal people. There is a lot of confusion about this, given that we often label or judge a person completely based on a few isolated facts.
For example, feeling jealousy, rage, anger, or envy is totally natural, and we should not be tormented by this. Where we should be especially careful is in not acting according to these feelings and emotions.
In other words, we shouldn’t make ourselves blow up like a volcano, nor let certain circumstances dominate us. We are obviously going to feel envy if we see that someone else has something that we long for, or when we see someone else advance in their life while we remain stuck. These kinds of emotions should not be disappointments or frustrations, but rather opportunities for growth.
In absolutely no way does this mean that we are undeserving of a positive description of our character. With the simple fact of being aware that we cannot escape a single one of our emotions or negative feelings, we can take one more step forward on the path of development of our emotional intelligence.
Advice for overcoming destructive emotions
In general, we say that emotionally intelligent people are those who are characterized by being fair, authentic, loyal, honest, prudent, and respectful. These are aspects that often define people who are well balanced.
Kindness is a gift that must be enjoyed just as much as it must be worked on. In order to reach this emotional balance that we admire so much, we must learn to overcome our destructive emotions.
As we already know, very few people are able to make these destructive emotions simply disappear, and most likely they can never disappear completely. This would go against the emotional nature of humans. In order to overcome these difficult feelings, we must work on certain aspects them and of ourselves:
1. We must understand them
As we have already stated, we must cut ourselves off from the idea that our emotions are intolerable and take a step beyond to be able to consolidate this new belief. When these emotions we consider destructive emerge, we must think about them, what they mean, and what created them.
2. We must free ourselves from fear
Being emotional beings is not something that is negative, right? From this reasoning we can say that feeling jealousy or anger in a given moment is also not negative. In the end, the statement is the same. The only difference is that by naming the emotion, we are getting more specific and speaking more concretely. However, the concept remains the same.
It is probably more tolerable to think of how it is natural for a child to become angry or jealous. We know that we don’t need to punish a child for feeling these things, but rather just help them understand the situation and understand what they are feeling.
Why don’t we treat ourselves the same way? It is exactly the same. Understanding this and internalizing it will help us to not fear our own nature and our own emotions.
3. We must take off all labels
Generally, human beings tend to make internal, stable, and global designations to the behaviors that others consider negative. Although we may be more benevolent to ourselves, we end up fearing that others will label and categorize us.
We are not always aware that this is happening in our mind, but we do know the prejudice that means that others consider us to conform to something that does not define us.
4. Cultivating emotional balance
Even though we could consider destructive emotions as feelings that are harmful for both ourselves and others, the truth is that they only become destructive when they disturb our mental balance.
In other words, it is not so much the actual feeling of rage as it is letting that rage build over time and eat away at us. Although it is not easy to extract positivity from each and every emotion we have, it is the path we must take to be able to reach the mental peace that we so long for and admire.
In this way, reflecting on our emotions and self-worth will help us promote aspects related to being good people like compassion, peace, and trust.
