Leave Mean People Alone
You have to be careful who you deal with in this life, because not everybody has your best interests at heart. There will always be people who will hurt you, always people who love you, and most people will be completely indifferent to you.
The best advice I could ever lend anyone would be to avoid mean people. Some people are just mean. On the Internet, those bad qualities are only amplified. In real life, people that are hateful drain others of their joy. There’s a compelling argument to just leave mean people alone.
There’s an old adage that says, “if somebody yells at the waitress, they’ll yell at you.” Over the years, I’ve found this to be one of the most useful pieces of advice I’ve ever received.1 What makes this proverb so clear is the first time you meet somebody that regards other people so lowly.
As I’ve been working with other people in a group setting lately (after years at a computer desk), the experience reminds me just how some people are just better to avoid. But there is a flip side to this. Seek, gravitate toward, and follow nice people.
It sounds simple to leave the bad and go to the good — and it is. But people don’t seem to do what’s in their best interests. Part of human psyche is follow our learned behaviors. Sometimes those learned behaviors need tweaking. Sometimes they need more tweaking than others.
Avoid mean people. Don’t be their friend. Tell them you are not their friend because they are mean. But don’t forget that you are a person too, and you have to be nice to other people as well.
If people keep avoiding you, now you may know why.
- Other great pieces of advice include “look out” and “duck”. Presumably these are so commonly known that I didn’t need to mention them. ↩