For several years now I’ve been listening to “This I Believe” on the radio and via podcast. I’ve found it fascinating to hear what others believe, the foundations on which they build their lives. The series as resurrected on NPR is a revival of a series from the 1950s hosted by Edward R. Murrow. Although it’s no longer being broadcast over NPR, the podcast continues, as do spinoffs created by local NPR affiliates like this one at WHYY. For several years I’ve wondered what I would write if I undertook the task of writing an essay like this. Sure, I had lots of ideas – I believe in love, the primacy of family, commitment, flowers, butterflies, and other happy stuff – but none of them seemed to really capture what I was looking for – an overarching, guiding belief. Until one day it hit me… so here is my essay:
This I Believe
I believe that people do the best they can with what they have at the time. This is something my husband said to me a few months ago and the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it really encapsulates my belief. I believe that people are innately good and want to do what is right. I believe that people are complex; they are the interplay between innate resources and their experiences. They may have all the resources to do the right thing – the understanding, the spirit, the drive – but if that is hampered by their experiences and emotions we may not see it.
It’s easy for us to judge the behavior of others – what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s laudable, what’s abhorrent – and in doing so it’s too easy us for us to pigeonhole people into the good, the bad, the saintly, and the evil. The reality is the saintly person may do a bad thing and the evil person may show moments of goodness. When you truly look at people as innately good with subsequent experiences that either inhibit or enhance the expression of that goodness, it’s hard to judge and to pigeonhole them.
I’m a social worker. I’m supposed to believe in the inherent strength and goodness of others. Like so many other people, though, I find that it’s not easy to do at times. I work with a population that is middle to upper class with many more resources – tangible and intangible – at their disposal than many other clients of social work. But what of my colleagues that work with addicts, sex offenders, domestic violence perpetrators, or people with narcissistic personality disorder? Can you really believe that a sex offender was doing the best that she could with what she had at the time when she is violating a child? Can you really believe that a violent husband is doing the best with what he has at the time when he is beating his wife? Yes, and I would argue that we have to do just that. I have to remember that the sex offender may have been a victim herself of sexual abuse and, as a result, hasn’t internalized the boundaries of appropriate sexual behavior. I have to remember that the violent husband may once have been a little boy with a violent father who taught him that the only way to express anger or to relate to women is through violence and domination.
How can I hold out hope that there is a different future for a person if I don’t believe that, given more resources, he or she could do better? If I don’t believe that someone can help the sex offender or violent husband find within him or herself the capacity to love and respect others appropriately, how can I possibly expect that the person will believe that of themself? If I believe that people are full of capacities and strengths that, through life experiences, brain wiring, or whatever, they may have been limited from using, I therefore believe that they CAN access them at some point in the future.
Now, don’t get me wrong – believing that people do the best they can with what they have at the time doesn’t absolve people from responsibility from their actions. There are still consequences – negative or positive – to be had as a result of human behavior. If you violate a child or beat someone, you should receive the consequences. However, you should not therefore be labeled a person of lesser value because you are a criminal. If you had a spark of “redemption” growing within and you faced this experience, it could very well crush that spark removing one of your tools for becoming a better person.
It’s not always easy to believe that people are doing the best they can with what they have. We are a judgmental society and I am a judgmental person. In my head, I notice and judge the person wearing the clothes too tight for their body, the parent that spanks their child, the poor person who spends any financial windfall received with abandon, the person who takes a while to understand a concept that, to me, is painfully simple. By judging I’m dehumanizing them, putting them into a neat little hole with a label. When I stop and think that maybe those people are people who just have a different fashion sense than I, have never been taught a discipline tool other than spanking, feel the deprivation of chronic or consistent poverty and just once don’t want to feel that way, or whose brain is wired differently than mine, it makes them more multidimensional, less a label and more a complex human being. I don’t do this successfully everyday but it’s what I aspire to – to believe and to see that people are doing the best they can with what they have at the time.
