Growing up, I can remember my mom often insisting that I give people the Benefit of the Doubt whenever possible. In fact, being a little trouble maker, I was often the beneficiary of this generous outlook. It’s not any easy thing to allow, to believe in the goodness of people when there are always a million reasons not to.

Stepping back.

Whenever I get a chance to put some distance between my initial, often more judgemental, reactions to someone’s actions I almost always find that I was being too harsh. It will turn out that they were not, in fact, being assholes; that maybe I had misread the situation. At least, I’ll often find, that I simply don’t have enough information to assume the worst.

Nowhere is Believing the Best more important than online.

On the interwebs, we lose many of the hints that we can use to inform our assumptions in the “real” world. Not that these off-line assumptions are any less informed by ego or emotions. It’s just that online we lose tone of voice, body language and facial expressions at least to some extent. I often find people are really rude online. My initial reaction, I’m embarrassed to say, is to tear those cheeky so-and-so’s a new one.

So, probably more for me than you, I’m just wanted to put this in words: people are essentially good and I’m going to assume the best. I’m going to give people the benefit of doubting that they are jerks. Until I know otherwise, I am going to read the words I find online with a tone befitting this view. And, most of all, I’m going to do myself the good service of letting people be innocent until proven guilty.

Do it for the children.

We’re a community. A real community, not just some abstract metaphor but a group of people working and living our lives together. The alternatives to assuming the best are not places I want to live in. I’m done road raging at my desk. So, next time we meet you’ll have a reason to assume the best too.