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Step 27: “Toxic people” don’t exist and this explains why
The 88 rungs of happy people
In this new episode of “The 88 steps of happy people” I invite you to discover why we are wrong when we refer to the supposed toxicity of people
What I’m about to tell you is unpopular. If I wanted to score as many goals as a striker scores goals, then I would tell you a much more popular and widespread phrase: «Be careful with the toxic people». Or better yet: “We have to stay away from toxic people so they don’t contaminate us.” Sorry. I will not be the one to say them.
I know that reading the title of this “Step” has given you a little sadness. Alright. Not to you, because you are the exception, but to the rest of the readers, yes. And do you know why they have felt sorry for them? Because demonizing gives pleasure, and if we say that toxic people don’t exist, then they can’t be demonized. Is it macabre about pleasure? Yes, but people do not think about how macabre it is, but about the taste it gives. They were sorry because they were happy to use a denouncing tone with which we classify someone as a “toxic person” and then we all feel full of justification in putting a cross on them, if possible with the support of a group, since, if there is a group behind, demonization seems more legitimate. Bad luck. It can not. And now you will see why.
The company ‘Chismes’ is a company of about three hundred employees that manufactures and sells footwear. José, one of the account managers, is a person with many virtues and a small flaw: he has a habit of gossiping, and he enjoys playing the role of “savior” of the new employees who have just joined the company, giving the part of who, according to him, are the good and bad people within the company. He is given to finding a couple of negative episodes to extract from the behavior of a coworker with which to dictate his sentence: «Don’t go near Fulanito. He is a toxic person.
One day, José was in the warehouse upstairs making an inventory of shoes from the previous season. The warehouse location where he was located was the area directly above the kitchen, and through a grill he heard how the group made up of his regular gossiping companions began to unleash each of their languages and dictate the same sentence. that he used to rule: “It’s toxic.”
Just when he was thinking “I will join shortly”, his face froze. His entire body was stunned when he heard his name and realized that this time the victim was not a third party. It was him.
“Toxic? Me? How is it possible? He thought to himself. «There are a thousand reasons why this is false: I have invited each one of them to eat in a disinterested way, I am a father who adores his children, I cried when they gave an award to several of my colleagues, I gave a part of my salary for the operation of the daughter of one of the administrative, I donate money to four charities … ». His mind found at least 30 reasons why he was NOT a toxic person.
Were they fake? No. They were all true.
Why then did they dare to conclude something so categorical about him? Because they were unaware of a wisdom pill, the same one that José ceased to be unaware of that day. Thanks to that pill, from that moment on, José never again categorized anyone with the label of “toxic” or any other.
Would you like to know that pill? Get ready.
When José heard his companions say about him what he had said on numerous occasions about others, his entire body was engulfed by a repulsive and unpleasant feeling caused not only by the rejection of his work colleagues, but by the bias of his conclusions. The pain gnawed at him and, above all, the feeling of injustice. However, what was at first the greatest nightmare, ended up becoming the greatest blessing. What José learned that day, and what caused him not to “classify” people again, was that when you judge people as toxic or non-toxic, desirable or undesirable, well born or badly born, or ultimately, as only good or only bad people, you are making a huge mistake: the error of judging with a binary scale – that is to say, of two positions – the enormous range of attitudes and behaviors of the human being that includes infinite positions. It’s like judging a rainbow through a black and white television. The TV only gives you the white option and the black option, but the rainbow is made up of many more. Just as that television will never do justice to that rainbow, that label will never do justice to the thousands of virtues of that person.
That day, José swallowed his own medicine like a smoker swallows his own ash… and he stopped “smoking.” He understood something of vital importance: that the reason why toxic people do not exist is because …. We are all toxic people at some times and at the same time, we are all wonderful people at others.. This is why no human being is in a position to demonize another. Thanks to having seen himself in the skin of the one who is demonized, José learned that …
# 88StepsPeopleHappy
“Invalidating a person for a terrible mistake is like closing all schools for a terrible teacher.”
@Angel