Trying to Understand People Instead of Judging Them

 
One thing about me is that I spend a lot of time trying to understand people. 

Not what they show on the surface, but what might be happening underneath. The quiet things people do not say out loud.
I have come to realize that human beings are very quick to judge each other. Someone does something and immediately the world forms an opinion. People label it weak, selfish, irresponsible, or wrong. The judgment comes fast. Almost instantly. But the understanding almost never comes.

And the truth is, none of us really knows what another person is carrying.

Lately I have been thinking about people who reach the point of ending their lives. The way society talks about them always feels harsh to me. People reduce their entire existence to that final decision. As if that moment appeared out of nowhere. As if it was a random choice made in a calm and clear mind.

But I do not believe life works like that.
No one wakes up one morning, perfectly fine, mentally stable, and suddenly decides they do not want to exist anymore. Something must have been building long before that day. Pain does not just appear in one moment. It grows slowly. Quietly. Sometimes over months. Sometimes over years.

Things happen to people that they never fully recover from. Experiences that never sit right in their minds. Words that stay with them longer than anyone realizes. Failures that slowly eat away at their confidence. Fear about the future. The pressure of trying to survive in a world that often feels indifferent.
All of it piles up.

And sometimes the weight becomes too heavy.
I do not think people reach that point because they hate themselves. If anything, sometimes it feels like the opposite. Sometimes it feels like someone has simply reached the limit of what they can carry. Like their mind and heart are exhausted from fighting something that never seems to stop.

When someone is drowning emotionally, the outside world only sees the moment they stop swimming. They do not see how long the person had been struggling to stay afloat.
This is why I feel like we do not give people enough grace.

We judge people based on what they do in their worst moments. We act as if those moments define them completely. But none of us are only our worst moment. None of us are only our mistakes. None of us are only the decisions we make when we are overwhelmed by things we barely understand ourselves.

Every person is carrying something invisible.
Some people are walking around with anxiety that never lets their mind rest. Some people are fighting memories they cannot escape. Some are terrified about the future but pretend they have everything under control. Some people smile every day while feeling like something inside them is quietly breaking.
And because we cannot see those things, we assume they are not there.

That is why I try to approach people differently. Instead of asking what is wrong with someone, I find myself wondering what might have happened to them. What they might be carrying that the world cannot see.

Understanding people does not mean agreeing with everything they do. 

It simply means remembering that human beings are complicated. Our actions are rarely random. They come from somewhere. From experiences. From pain. From fear. From things we have never healed from.

Sometimes what people need most is not advice.
Sometimes they just need someone who is willing to understand where they are.

By Daniel ndung'u maina 

The Good That Still Exists in People

The more I observe people, the more I realize something that feels both simple and difficult to accept at the same time. Every human being carries some form of good inside them. It does not matter how broken someone seems, how angry they become, or how terrible their actions might look from the outside. Somewhere inside, there is still a part of them that understands what is right.

That thought has been sitting with me for a while.
It is not that I want to excuse the harm people cause. Violence, cruelty, and crime are real. People make decisions that destroy lives, including their own. Nothing about understanding someone’s mind should erase the damage their actions create.
But I often wonder what was happening inside their mind before they became the person the world now sees.

When society talks about criminals or people who commit terrible acts, we usually speak about them as if they were born different from the rest of us. As if they are simply evil people who woke up one day and decided to become that way. But human beings rarely work like that.

Most people start life with the same basic instincts. The desire to belong. The desire to survive. The desire to feel respected, loved, or seen. Somewhere along the way, something changes
Sometimes it is the environment someone grows up in. where violence becomes normal before a child even understands what peace looks like. Sometimes it is neglect, where a person grows up without guidance, without protection, without anyone teaching them another way to live. Sometimes it is desperation, when survival starts to feel more urgent than morality.

None of these things justify harm. But they help explain how someone’s mind slowly bends in a direction they might never have chosen if life had given them different options.

When I try to imagine the mindset of someone who commits crimes, I do not imagine a person who thinks they are the villain in their own story. Most people rarely see themselves that way. In their mind, they are surviving, defending themselves, or doing what they believe they must do.

A person who steals may feel they have no other way to feed themselves or their family. Someone who grows up surrounded by violence may begin to believe that power and aggression are the only ways to survive. A person who has lived through years of anger, rejection, or humiliation may eventually stop believing that the world will treat them fairly.
And when people stop believing they have choices, their decisions change.

Still, even in those people, I believe there is a quiet part of them that knows what right looks like. A part that might have chosen differently if life had given them another path. A part that might still feel guilt, regret, or conflict even while doing something harmful.

Human beings are rarely made of only one thing. No one is completely good, and no one is completely evil. Most of us are mixtures of both, shaped by our experiences, our environment, and the moments that tested us when we were least prepared.

Understanding this does not mean excusing violence. It simply means refusing to reduce a human life to only its worst decision.

Because if circumstances had been different, if certain doors had opened instead of closing, if certain people had appeared at the right time to guide someone in another direction, some of the people we call evil today might have become something entirely different.

That thought does not erase responsibility. But it reminds me that every human mind is more complicated than the labels we give it.

And somewhere inside almost every person, no matter how far they have gone down the wrong path, there is still a small part that remembers what it means to do right.

By Daniel ndung'u maina