Naive?
Written on | November 16, 2012 | 3 Comments
This quote has been doing the rounds of Pinterest lately, and it got me thinking about something that happened at my work a little while ago. I work in a petrol station, and behind it there’s some really cheap housing where a bunch of shady but relatively nice people live .. that’s if you don’t count the gypsies who steal things, the builder who assaulted one of our supervisors in our store, two drug addicts, and the prostitute. (I know. I promise I don’t live in the ghetto.)
Every time the prostitute came into the store everyone would eye her suspiciously and be less than nice when they were serving her. I found this so sad, and tried to be nice to her. Everyone said to me “but she’s a prostitute, Gemma! She is not nice. You are far too naive about this world.” I thought that she may have been a prostitute, but she never stole anything from the store even when she told us that her methadone had been stopped and she was desperate, she was never smelly like some of our well-off customers and she always had nice manners. Therefore, despite her horrible circumstances it didn’t mean that I should treat her like rubbish.
.. Then came the day when she tried to solicit business from an old truck driver in a dark part of the car park, sneaked his wallet of his pocket when he refused, stole all the money from it and then handed it in like she’d found it and she was a good samaritan. Everyone seemed vindicated and told me that this was proof I should never have been nice to her in the first place, but I’m not so sure. I would much rather be perceived as naive and go around believing in the goodness of everyone in the world than going around feeling bitter about everyone and everything all the time.
What do you think? Do you think I was stupid and naive to give her the benefit of the doubt and think that a prostitute could be a nice person despite her circumstances?
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3 comments to “Naive?”
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I am never ever going to get over this.- hello rude people of the world! one day karma's going to get you back!
November 17th, 2012 @ 5:13 pm
I have always loved this quote by Martin Luther King Jr. “There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us.” We all have the capabilities to be good and horrible in us, prostitute or CEO or mother or professor. I don’t think the issue is whether you were naive for assuming she could be a “good” or “nice” person. Why not just treat everyone as human and someone worthy of our respect no matter what? I think it’s sad that others were chastising you for treating her like a normal person. She may do bad things but in my mind that does not elicit any rude or hurtful behavior from everyone in her life, much less strangers she sees at a gas station, you know? Those (people like her) are the people that need the best assumed of them and the most kindness out of anyone
November 18th, 2012 @ 12:19 pm
I believe that it’s very easy for people to make huge mistakes and very difficult to put those mistakes right; to try to change a life of addiction and prostitution takes huge courage, and the more people tell you you’re worthless, scum and not deserving of compassion, the harder that courage is to find. So, yes, I think you’re absolutely in right for treating other human beings with kindness, regardless of what sort of mess their lives might be in right now.
November 30th, 2012 @ 10:43 pm
Thank you guys! I think that the people I work with (and the way they treat others) are in the minority, so that can only be a good thing!