I’m a generally open person and I pride myself on being blatantly honest and completely straightforward. I have a filter, I just don’t like to use it, especially not around my closest friends who I trust completely. I’ll admit it, I have quite a few people in my life that I’d label as my “best friends.” The way I differentiate between friends and best friends is the range of conversations that are readily available to us. I can tell my best friends anything in the entire world and I trust them not to hold any of my words against me.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently and I’ve realized that there is one major way my closest friends and I balance each other out: I am quick to trust new people while more of my friends are quicker to be more skeptical. The way I explained this to my mom is that I believe in “innocent until proven guilty,” whereas my friends look at people more methodically and see trust as something that needs to be earned rather than given in the beginning of a new relationship. More of my friends test the waters of trust before going all in, and it’s probably the better way to prevent heartache if I’m being completely frank, but in my opinion I don’t think trust needs to be earned unless it was lost for some reason. To quickly clarify for those of you still reading, this is an explanatory article, not an argumentative one: I’m not fighting for either side. I don’t think I’m better because I focus on the good in new people, in fact, that actually makes me more vulnerable in relationships. I am simply acknowledging this difference that I’ve noticed and writing about how it applies to me.

Personally, I think the best way to get to know someone is to be completely honest and open-minded. I think going into any relationship, platonic or not, with preconceived notions is the worst way to start off. Sure, it’s great when someone you thought was a jerk is actually a genuinely decent human, but that initial judgement raises the bar for whatever good they do. If you see someone as ill-intentioned, you will never see their intrinsically motivated good deeds for what they are. I’m a huge weirdo so I am not one to judge, I’d rather get to know a person for who they really are (or at least who they show me they are) than expect ill of them based on hear-say. There are only a few moral things that I take issue with, that I would consider cutting off all communication for.

Also, being the grandpa that I am inside, I dig deep. I want to know your favorite color and the nightmare that kept you up for all of second grade. A lot of people seem mean or vain, or they just have a sarcastic jerk vibe -- but that doesn’t mean they are any of those things. My best friend’s teasing sense of humor makes people think he’s an a**hole, another one has a resting b**** face, yet they are two of the best people I’ve ever met. More often than not, the behaviors people show the world aren’t indicative of who they are.

So yes, I may be too trusting and the good I see in people may be masking the horrible, but I believe that everybody deserves a chance or two. Sometimes giving people those chances can be terrifying, that’s completely understandable, but there are ways to mask your fear and skepticism. Your attempts to protect yourself from pain shouldn’t block out what could be love. In my humble opinion, the amazing people you do find are worth the struggle you went through to find them, maybe all they needed was a second chance to prove themselves.