I don’t know if what I said last week was offensive or not, but I do know that I did a poor job of explaining my good/bad list qualities. So I’m going to see if I can do that more clearly today.

The list of qualities for considering someone “good” isn’t just to determine who’s on the good list. As I said last week, sorting people into groups isn’t even something I do on a conscious level. It’s more about me knowing someone is good and that means he or she has all the qualities I believe a good person has. Every single one.

You’re on my good list, so you are automatically kind and honest and loyal and dedicated and heroic and smart in my book. Everybody has off days, but I know that you would never do something to intentionally hurt someone. You’re just not that kind of person.

Great Pyrenees dog and goats CC BY 2.0
devra from los osos – great pyrenees dog and goats

That’s why you have to do so much to change lists…to convince me that you don’t have those qualities. This has not always worked out for me, so you’d think that would teach me to be more cynical or at least hold back my trust until someone has earned it, but it really hasn’t. And that’s what my bad list is really for; to help me figure out who to trust.

One quality that’s been a bit tricky for me to pin down is arrogance. For most of my youth, the arrogant people I knew had been on my good list, which meant they were automatically kind and loving on the inside. Whether it was actually true or not is a separate matter. Anyway, based on that experience, I assumed that all arrogant people had a soft, squishy, heart-of-gold center. It took some really shallow arrogant people to disabuse me of that notion.

For instance, I knew a fairly arrogant guy in college who would joke that he was three feet deep. At least, I thought he was joking. Turns out he was really was just that shallow and didn’t really care about anyone but himself. That doesn’t make him a bad person, he has the right to be as shallow as he pleases, but it does put him on my “bad” list because he’s not someone I can trust.

That’s why I say I’m not judging people with my bad list. Not in the traditional sense, anyway. I’m just trying to protect myself.

Barlow in Hiding CC BY 2.0
Andrew Smith from Seattle, WA – Barlow in Hiding

If you were offended by last week’s post and made the effort to come back this week, I hope I haven’t made it worse with this explanation. Thank you for giving me another chance.