How to See the Good in Bad People

Or The Complicated Case of the Missing Salt Shakers

I cherished my grandmother (who I called “Nana”) and my great Aunt (who I called Aunt D). They lived far away and didn’t visit more than once a year. When they did come, they, without fail, brought me and my brothers to the toy store and let us pick out something.

Aunt D was eccentric. Whenever she came, we had to turn off the cuckoo clock (she found it annoying), cage our parakeets (she was afraid of them) and wait in line for the bathroom (she spent what seemed like hours each morning “putting on her face.”) Her hair was always just right, not a strand out of place. She rarely wore anything less fancy than a skirt or dress slacks. She always wore perfume.

Nana sat and read comic books with me for hours and never seemed bored. When I developed an interest in MAD magazine, she developed an interest, too, and she never told my mother that the content was exceptionally inappropriate for someone my age. To the contrary: she renewed my subscription every year on my birthday. Later she talked to me about boys—what to look for and what to stay away from. I told her things I would never tell my mother.

Nana died more than 20 years ago but, from her, I also learned many life lessons that have stuck with me to this day. Whenever I’m feeling crummy or having a bad day, I hear her voice say, “This, too, shall pass.” Whenever I’m coming down from an emotional high, I can hear her tell me, “After such pleasures, the heart is sad.”

And when I can’t find something I’m looking for, she says, “You only find things when you stop looking for them.”

I thought that we had a special bond—that I knew her as well as anyone did. It was only recently that I learned that she and my great Aunt lived according to a unique code of ethics. My mother recently told me, for instance, about Nana’s cream pitcher collection. It was the counterpart to my great aunt’s salt shaker collection. Both collections were quite enormous, entirely composed of items stolen from restaurants.

“We’d all go out to eat. Toward the end of the meal, a wicked look would come over their faces. Out would come these huge purses. Into the purses would go saltshakers, milk pitchers and anything else they felt like taking,” my mother said.

It was a conspiracy, one the two sisters took great pride and pleasure in. They only filched the good stuff. If it was plastic, it stayed on the table. If it was ceramic, it went in a purse.

They had perfected it, never getting caught. For them, stealing knickknacks off restaurant tables was an art form.

It was disconcerting to learn of her milk pitcher hobby because the new information changed my view of her. Was she a good person? Or was she a thief? Could a thief be a good person?

Where was the line?

My meditation teacher has told me time and time again that labels – good, bad, cruel, kind, ethical, dastardly—are creations of my mind. They do not exist inherently. I might see someone as “bad,” but someone else is just as likely to see that person as “good.”

According to this teaching, “evil” is just a fabricated label. What you see as “evil,” someone else might find “brilliant” or even “compassionate.”

I know—it’s a tough one to wrap one’s mind around, especially when you start dissecting how you feel about mass murderers such as Hitler and Pol Pot.

A bit easier to swallow is this: what we find annoying in one moment can become delightful in the next. Consider: Have you ever gone to bed convinced that you were going to murder your spouse in his sleep? Then have you woke the next day and wondered what you were so angry about the night before?

I found myself thinking about this teaching in regards to my grandmother. In a restaurant owner’s eyes, she was a no-good thief. In my eyes, she was a loving, supportive grandmother who was really good at finding humor in the darker side of life.

Perhaps someone else thought of her as a hoarder in need of psychological help. After all who needs dozens ceramic milk pitchers?

Yet another person might see her a different way.

I try to remind myself of this whenever I am tempted to label someone in my life as “annoying” or “controlling” or something else.

I ask myself, “Was this person this annoying yesterday?” If the answer is “no,” then it stands to reason that the person won’t be as annoying tomorrow or even in sixty minutes. If the answer is “yes,” then I must ask myself, “Am I seeing only one side of this person? Is it possible that there are people who do not find this person annoying at all? Is it possible that I am the one who is being annoying and judgmental?”

These questions then lead me to the ultimate question,  “What can I learn from this?”

And that’s the question that transforms everything, because once I can learn from a situation, I’m no longer helpless and out of control. I can do something to change it, even if it involves turning myself into a less annoying, less judgmental person.

How about you? How do you dissect anger so you can see the object of your anger clearly and from all sides? Do you think there are two sides to every story and person? Or do you feel your anger is always justified?

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