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All People Have A Choice To Be Good Or Bad. You Just To Have To Help Them Make The Right Choice

August 5, 2009

All People Have A Choice To Be Good Or Bad. You Just To Have To Help Them Make The Right Choice ‘All women can be divided into two categories,’ a friend of mine, a woman, said to me recently. ‘Hmmm,’ I said. ‘That’s a new one. Tell me more.’

And my friend explained to me that women who belong to the first of the two categories are set on destroying the men with whom they have a relationship or to whom they are married. And women from the other category, according to her, include those who help their men achieve great things and who are not afraid of being left in the shadow. ‘They don’t look for praise,’ my friend said. ‘They love their men and give them all their support.’

I must say that initially I did not really give much thought to what she had said. Sure, I knew that some women can be very manipulative. But then men can be manipulative as well, although from my experience I have learnt that women can be much more determined than men to achieve what they want when it comes to dominating in a relationship or marriage. Men are simpler in their desires and needs and when they want to dominate over a woman they are more obvious and open in achieving their goal, if you know what I mean. Being mean, selfish and cruel, but in a primitive, obvious sort of way.

But women - women can be very patient and cunning and clever in establishing their dominance. And what is more important, they have the ultimate weapon at their disposal, because they decide whether a man is allowed access to their bodies or not. Men are the ones who beg and plead, but women are the ones who ultimately say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. And it gives them great power over men.

But this is not the main point here, as I have realised later. The main point here is that women, who are set to ‘destroy’ their men, as my lovely friend had put it, do not do it because they are mean and bad in their nature. They do it because they have either been mistreated by men in the past or because they feel insecure and defenceless or want to protect themselves from some unexpected eventuality.

So what I am saying here is this: women, who do not feel as one with their men and who do not give them their support and backing, are not evil by nature but are simply confused, disoriented or have suffered so much that their judgement becomes clouded. They are not bad, they are simply missing the big picture about the whole point of a marriage or a long term relationship.

The same applies to men, by the way. Men, who treat their wives or girlfriends badly, are not evil in their essence. They just don’t understand what they are missing and that they are pushing away the very people who could have been their closets and most supportive allies and friends.

So the conclusion from all of this is: all people, men or women, are basically good, but they can get confused and not realise what is good for them. Human beings can’t be born bad. It simply goes against all logic. So it means that they are given a choice to be either good or bad and they make that choice themselves.

But there are, of course, factors that help them make the right or the wrong choice. I remember once my son, who was about five then, asking me how criminals came to be. What, he asked me, made some people turn bad? And you know what I said to him? I said, without taking any time to think about it: ‘People often become bad, son, when nobody loves them. They get bitter and turn to crime.’

Now, I had no idea where I got this from. It was as if someone else answered the question, not me.

I know, I know, it was not a proper answer, but it had a good point in it. If people are always told that they are bad, it is much easier for them to make the wrong choices in life.

I am not one of those people, who explain all the evils of this world by social inequality, unemployment, lack of education, discrimination, racism, poverty and so on. Because let’s face it, not all people who suffer racial abuse, discrimination, who are unemployed and have no money become bad and turn to crime. In fact, the overwhelming majority of deprived people are very decent and honest and it is only a tiny minority that brags about being sucked into a world of crime and vice because they have been turned into social outcasts.

Some people would tell you that crime is caused by social injustice, inequality, lack of education and even the widening gap between the rich and the poor. What rubbish, what absolute drivel! Being good or bad is always about personal choice. It is never imposed on you by the outside world. There are, obviously, outside factors that can help or hinder making the right choice, but it is still always about a person’s own decision.

So, if it is about choice of being good or bad, it is important to help people to make the right choice by finding good in them and pointing it out to them. It is never a good idea to impose on these people all the time that they are bad and that they should be ashamed of themselves, but to at least occasionally try to find something positive in them. Because there is always something good in all people and we have to build on these natural good traits to develop them further.

So why don’t we say to them: ‘You are not really all bad. Go on, fight for yourself. Find the strength in you to say ‘no’ to your bad urges. Learn to find happiness in helping others. Learn to be a good husband or a good wife, if we adapt this approach to what my friend has said to me about the two categories of women.

And with our encouragement and help seemingly bad people might make the right choice at last. Because some of them have had to go through hell from the earliest age and they turned to crime or began to hate the whole world not because they were bad but because there was no one beside them to give them support and everyone just said that they were bad. And they sort of went with the flow.

It has a lot to do with the false perception about people that is developed by others. Because some people are branded bad from when they are very young and they get confused and eventually make the wrong choice. But that, of course, does not mean that you should not fight for them. Because they are given a choice throughout all of their lives and can change for the better at any moment.

Let me tell you a story that I had heard from a good friend of mine, a famous Russian writer, who died several years ago. He told me once how an old friend of his, a talented Soviet poet, who had chosen an easy option and wrote most of his poems to glorify the Soviet Communist Party, was dying of cancer at the age of 70 something. He had asked to see my friend to say the last goodbye. My friend had arrived at the poet’s house, entered his bedroom, approached his bed and saw that there were tears rolling down his face. ‘What is it?’ he asked the dying man. ‘Why are you crying, Yaroslav?’

And the famous poet, who had been showered with official praise all his life, turned to him and said: ‘I have just realised that I’ve wasted all my life and all my talent on stupid things. And it has become unbearable to think about it.’

So please, always try to find good things in people. Even in the ones, who seem to you to be beyond change for the better. Remember, they always have a choice. Right up to the very last moments of their lives.

– End –

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2 Responses to “All People Have A Choice To Be Good Or Bad. You Just To Have To Help Them Make The Right Choice”

  1. Nina Thomas on December 23rd, 2008 10:02 am

    Dear Friend,

    i love the article and wish you always success. have a good day.

  2. Gren-Hilda on August 5th, 2009 7:07 pm

    Now you have opened my mental can of worms! Wow, what a complex issue, but here goes. I think it’s simplistic to divide people into categories, though you know that. There are successful relationships where couples work together and support each other, and then the obvious alternative. The variations of interactions between people are infinite and you might see two people who were an unsuccessful couple go on to form happy partnerships with others. Different people affect us in different ways and can bring out good or bad in each other. Our mother’s advice about being careful of the company you keep is spot on. I do however believe in true evil and think it is a force, like good, in our world. Sometimes when it manifests, nothing is going to make any difference and understanding is moot. I would have to be a better person than I am now to have sympathy, or try to find good, in serial killers, paedophiles and rapists, and as a mother if one of those fiends touched my children I doubt they would live to tell the tale. Supernatural forces aside (and there is more to life than the tangible.) I recall learning about the Bell Curve (I think?) many years ago where all human behaviour falls on a spectrum in the form of a curve, at one end is Mother Theresa, on the other Jeffrey Dahmer, for instance. And all of us in the middle! I see the ills of society, and it sometimes makes me feel like I’m going insane! Society is definitely rotting (as your contributer Adam Lovejoy points out in his article about the end of the world.) I see evil and good polarising and that we are on the brink of a huge societal change, but we are oblivious to it and it only comes to us in our dreams. I dream of a better world. I did warn you about the can of worms! Thank you, again, for your thought provoking articles. G

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