Idealizing people, trying to see only the good in them, is a dangerous habit, especially in our age of universal worship of money and the loss of moral values. Sooner or later, a severe disappointment awaits. Writer Nikolai Kryshchuk considers this approach to be fundamentally wrong. His column is about why it’s important to see the best in people.
Communicating with my friends from a small village, I noticed one feature. Most of them live rather poorly, but the conversation never turned to money. The hostesses boasted of large tomatoes or showed unusual flowers, the owners dragged them into the bathhouse — a masterpiece of neatness and design. Many proudly took out letters received for this or that cause. Looking at their happy faces, I thought about the wisdom of the local authorities, who revived this Soviet tradition.
You can, of course, explain all this by provincial innocence. But no, for the most part my friends are smart people and far from simple-minded.
In a city where there is more money, more people talk about it. But still, this is not the main theme. The guy who heads a private artel for apartment renovation spoke enthusiastically about new materials, technological secrets and requirements for interior style. Manager of the restaurant business — about the economic benefits of charitable actions. The head of a mobile communications firm spent the entire evening reminiscing about how in the summer he and his friends opened a new route to one of the hard-to-reach mountain peaks.
- Why do we need a smile?
Actually, what surprised me was that these disinterested, proud and enthusiastic conversations take place against the backdrop of a general belief that the desire to earn money has ousted all other interests and emotions from society. To say that this has nothing to do with reality would be hypocrisy. Today, even a little girl, showing off her new handbag to her friend, will not forget to say that it cost her dad five hundred rubles.
Everything is so, but the conversations I have cited did not want to confirm the boring diagnosis of the universal worship of Mammon, reaching to the point of insanity. Once such a diagnosis, I remember, had already been made and caused a violent reaction. The reason for it was the famous speech of 1972 by the Austrian psychiatrist and psychologist, a former prisoner of the Nazi camps, Viktor Frankl.
Refuting the prevailing opinion, he said that only 16% of the students surveyed saw making money as the main problem and task of life. Most were concerned with finding purpose and meaning in life.
Frankl explained this fact with a wonderful example. In his advanced years, he began taking aircraft piloting lessons. The instructor explained that if he takes off from point A and wants to get to point B, to the east, but a side north wind is blowing, he will eventually be blown away and he will land at point C. Therefore, as the pilots say, you need to “fly with drift” . If you aim at the airfield, you will fly south. Aiming north of the airfield, you will just hit it.
- Gratitude is good for us!
The same is true for humans, says Frankl. “If we consider a person as he is, we only make him worse. But if we overestimate him, then we help him to be what he really can be. So in a sense, we have to be idealists, because in the end we turn out to be real realists. The point, it must be added, is not in appeals: be like that! Not in a benevolent, but nevertheless concealing demand, encouragement: you can! In general, not in educational or pedagogical measures, which are most often annoying. To the one who calls him, calls are given easily, but in the communication of people they are of little value. It is much more difficult to set yourself up for a different attitude towards a person. Treat not only his actions, but his secret desires and dreams as an undeniable reality. “To overestimate”, according to Frankl, or to idealize, to see the best, does not mean to lie at all. Many times I had to observe how a man, by all accounts, finished, with a bad reputation, was magically transformed when communicating with some girl or old man who seemed not to be at all familiar with the «general opinion». They somehow felt that he himself was suffering from his position. They just asked for help: cut the cabbage, uproot the stump, enter the defrosting program in the microwave. They had no idea that he could refuse, and that is why, unsociable and embittered, he happily set to work. And I liked myself at that moment. And blossomed from any praise.
It is not certain that this transformation will last long. But, perhaps, it will force him, sooner or later, to change his attitude towards himself and towards life. In any case, turning to the best in a person is correct, because it requires attentiveness and mental effort. The stereotypical (according to reputation) harms not only the one at whom it is directed, but also the one who automatically follows it.