Are good people always naïve?

I came across a confirmative statement – good people are naïve. Such statement can be interpreted in more than one way, but any of interpretations I can come up with turns out depressing.

If it says that there is no good in life, so only naïve can hope that their goodness is meaningful. This would mean that reality is never good, including intentions, relationships, trust in others and many, many things I would like to believe in without feeling that I am a sucker.

Another interpretation could be – if you are a good person you will be taken for a ride. Maybe it is actually the same side of the goodness coin.

The reason why I have embarked on such a subject is based on being rather self-centered. For quite few years I felt uncomfortable about one of assessment of me as a person. It was one of those management courses when you are supposed to learn about management and also about yourself as a leader. Each evening we worked in groups of four people preparing final presentation for assessment of our suitability as managers. Our group was a difficult one as we all wanted to run the show their own way. We worked till late hours and towards the end of the week sleep deprivation was a problem of us all. I thought that we will never agree on what and how we should present. Each evening when we came to our room somebody would be standing with a marker in front of the whiteboard. Marker was power. The sad point was that each day it would be somebody different and we did not move forward.

What I want to write about now is an assessment I got from the three of my colleagues. We were supposed to fill in a questionnaire about personal traits of the others.  I scored “sincere” as my top characteristic on which all the other three this time had the same opinion. What surprised me was that I was not happy with the assessment. It is actually positive – open, non deceitful, genuine. Why did I feel put down by it? It seemed to me that they were saying that I was naïve, gullible, weak and lacking development powers of analysis (sic!). Who? Moi?

                                              

I did not like it, but I had to accept their observation even if it has bothered me ever since. When I came across the statement about good meaning naïve, it caught my attention. There have been events in my life when I assumed that people around me can be trusted and then, at times, I was proven that my expectations were incorrect. Was I too naïve? Possibly. Should I change my approach to experience less disappointment in my life? My answer is NO. My choice is to see good in people. Not as a blind assumption, but after positive initial assessment,  I want to trust rather than suspect deceit. It may be that I will be hurt and disappointed more than I could if I took a different approach, but not to trust permanently is beyond my capability. It looks that I chose naivety as a part of sincerity as a companion of living my way. 

                                                   

I have been house bound for two weeks now, with mess in the house and in my thoughts. People coming and going, raising dust and noise and I still do not see the end to my future kitchen project. What is emerging does not seem to be what I had imagined, some disappointment is sneaking in. This is a difficult time for me and this may be the reason for choosing odd subjects for writing.