All idiot. All the time.

Our emotions can get pretty complex right? We're not just all happy or all sad all the time. Sometimes we're happy and excited, sometimes we're sad and angry..we're almost always at least 2 emotions at once. Girls are sometimes 235445 at once. Sometimes I cry at Taylor Swift songs on the same day that I refuse to give a homeless man my change. How can I be ridiculously emotional and kind of heartless in one day?

It's because people aren't all one way, or the other way.

You agree with that...right? You can consider yourself a compassionate person, but still recall the time you flipped out at your cable company over the phone. You were having a bad day, they were charging you for ESPN in 30 languages. It was just a combination of things that went wrong. So you can look past the small meltdown.

Still with me? Still agree?

Ok...then when was the last time you walked away from an employee at a store, or a customer where you work, or the person who stole your boyfriend or girlfriend and said to yourself and all of your friends, "Wow, what an asshole."?

Just like that. They do one wrong thing to you and BAM...they're all asshole, all the time. No redeeming them.

And at this point all of your friends are scared of you so no one's going to speak up and go, "maybe they were just having a bad day..."

Nope. It wasn't a bad day. It was just that they are 100% asshole.

Why are we so unforgiving like that? Why are we so quick to assume that just because we had an unpleasant interaction with someone, that every interaction they have ever had and will ever have moving forward is also unpleasant?

Social media makes it especially easy to brand people. Because everyone will agree with you. Post a status about how selfish people are and immediately all of your friends will like it or comment on it...just to make sure that it's definitely not them that is the selfish one. After all, they spent the time to read your comment. And press the like button. No possible way they can be selfish when they are that concerned about you.

I guess my point is, the next time you're thinking about branding someone's entire existence as "mean" or "stupid" think about the times that maybe you faltered a bit, and weren't at your best. Should someone judge your entire life based off of that moment?

Every time I'm on the phone with a customer service rep or anyone like that, and in my head I'm thinking they're the biggest idiot ever, I think about the time I was interning for a company, and someone called me and asked me who the president of the company was. I knew who the president of the company was. But I was eating lunch when the phone rang, I was unprepared to answer, and the president had actually changed in the last month. I stuttered out my answer, then told the person on the phone to "hang on a sec" while I asked the person next to me just to double check. I cannot even imagine how stupid the woman on the phone thought I was.

Oh yeah, then there was the time I called Norway Norwegia. I quickly corrected myself but the damage was done. Luckily I was with very good friends who didn't directly post it to Facebook...ohh wait :)

But I'm still a smart person...I swear.

You unforgiving folks out there are thinking, Nope. All idiot. All the time.


"It requires less character to discover the faults of others than it does to tolerate them."
-J. Petit Senn