A Promise

I recently came across a post on Facebook that made me think for days now.

I have this bad habit of believing people who make a promise to me…

I had to read it over and over again. Having a bad habit of believing someone… Having a bad habit of believing someone who promises something… Having a bad habit of believing someone who makes a promise to me…

There’s so much in this short sentence.

Why would it be a bad habit to believe someone in the first place? Why would it be a bad habit to believe someone who promises something? Because you might get disappointed. Maybe over and over again.

Everything that eventually leads to us being hurt might end up being labeled as a bad habit. What a shame. How far do you have to come to label it as a bad habit to believe people. And how much does that influence your future life. I’m a bit hopeless when it comes to people. I tend to see the good in people. Sometimes for too long.

I tend to try to find an excuse for a behavior (believe it or not) until they really prove to me that they don’t mean it well. And even then I try to find a reason why they might have had to act like that. It takes quite a bit of convincing to get me to the point where I quit seeing the good in people. Or then I have to have that really bad gut feeling form the very beginning. But then I don’t really get involved with someone in the first place.

So reading this again I realize that it’s me. I do have a bad habit of believing people who promise something to me. Because I want to believe them. I want to believe that they mean well. I want to believe that I can trust them. I want to believe that they are good. I want to see the good in people.

I find it sad that people can get you to the point where you label believing someone or in someone as a bad habit. And everything inside of me wants to scream no! I want to scream that it’s good to believe in people. Believe what they are telling you. Unfortunately way too often we are proven wrong.

So I ask you: What is worse? Stop believing in the first place and try to change a habit (a good habit) or being disappointed by people that obviously don’t deserve our trust in the first place?

It hurts, I know. But don’t you think you give up a really important part of you when you stop believing? Isn’t that way worse than getting hurt and learning a tough lesson? Where do you actually differentiate if you would at all? How can you know that you can trust someone or you can’t and why would you stop trusting someone who would never let you down just because someone else did at one point?

All of us have been in the situation (in situations) we promised ourselves never to find ourselves again. Situations that were hurtful and if we could we might even want to simply delete from our memory. And yet… they were necessary for our development. Necessary to shape us and to get us to where we are today. We will face people that don’t tell us the truth and we might even find out. And it might make us feel bad. In my books that is much easier to handle than going through my life without trusting. With not seeing the good in people, not believing that everyone means well.

I simply feel that we would just simply withdraw from our life, from the beauty of it. It would turn into a lonely place. I rather get disappointed a couple of times then being lonely and withdrawing from everything that is beautiful and fun.

Always remember: Just because one person is lying doesn’t mean others are.