I Want Good People Around Me

 

As I have gotten older, I have become much more intentional about the kind of people I want in my life, and it has very little to do with whether someone is popular, successful, entertaining, or even particularly similar to me. What matters to me much more is what kind of person they are when they are faced with something they do not understand, someone who is different from them, an opinion that challenges them, or a situation where empathy requires them to look beyond their own experience.

I want progressive people around me, and I do not mean that as some kind of trendy label I throw around because it sounds good. I mean people who are willing to learn, willing to reconsider what they believe, willing to listen to people whose lives are different from theirs, and willing to accept that the world is more complicated than whatever opinions they happened to inherit from their family, social circle, religion, culture, or the algorithm on their phone. Being informed is genuinely attractive to me because I want conversations with people who have curiosity about the world rather than certainty about everything they have never bothered to understand.

I care deeply about empathy, too, because intelligence without empathy can become something quite ugly. A person can be highly educated and still be cruel, dismissive, arrogant, or completely incapable of seeing another human being as worthy of consideration. I am much more interested in someone who can say, "I don't know enough about this, so I should learn," than someone who confidently repeats an ignorant opinion simply because it makes them feel superior.

Growing older has also made me much less interested in pretending that every opinion deserves equal respect simply because somebody has an opinion. I believe people are entitled to their thoughts, but I do not believe I have to admire every thought, tolerate every belief, or invite every worldview into my personal life. If someone's idea of an opinion involves discriminating against another group of people, mocking vulnerable people, excusing cruelty, dehumanizing someone because of who they are, or proudly refusing to learn anything that might challenge their worldview, I am allowed to find that deeply unattractive.

I think women are particularly encouraged to be accommodating in these situations. We are taught to be nice, to avoid conflict, to understand where everyone is coming from, to give people the benefit of the doubt, and to keep the peace even when something makes us uncomfortable. I have no interest in becoming a woman who has to sit quietly while somebody says something cruel and then reassure myself that I should not be "judgmental" for being bothered by it.

I can understand where someone's beliefs came from without agreeing with those beliefs. I can recognize that people are shaped by their upbringing without using that as an excuse for everything they choose to believe as adults. I can have compassion for somebody's limitations without making those limitations my problem to carry. At some point, personal responsibility has to enter the conversation, especially when someone's ignorance is hurting other people.

I also want people around me who are reasonable, because reasonableness has become such an underrated quality. I do not need everyone in my life to agree with me, and I would actually find that exhausting. I want people who can disagree without becoming vicious, who can change their minds without feeling humiliated, who can admit when they were wrong, and who understand that having a different opinion does not require turning another person into an enemy.

I love conversations where someone can say, "I never thought about it that way," and actually mean it. I love people who are curious enough to ask questions instead of immediately becoming defensive, because to me, intellectual humility is far more impressive than pretending to have an answer for everything. I want friendships and relationships where we can challenge each other, learn from each other, talk about complicated subjects, and still maintain respect even when we do not land in exactly the same place.

My standards for the people I allow close to me have changed because my understanding of what makes a relationship healthy has changed. I do not want relationships based purely on history, convenience, loneliness, shared hobbies, attraction, or the fact that we have known each other for years. I want to feel safe being myself around the people I love, and part of that safety comes from knowing that the person beside me has a basic respect for other human beings.

I have also realized that someone's attitudes toward people they do not personally know tell me a great deal about them. It is easy to be kind to someone you love, someone who helps you, someone who looks like you, or someone whose approval you want. The deeper question is how you think about people who have nothing to offer you, people whose lives you do not understand, people who have less power than you, or people you have been taught to look down on. That is where I pay attention.

I do not want to spend my life constantly explaining why discrimination is harmful, why cruelty is not funny, why vulnerable people deserve compassion, why facts matter, or why another person's humanity should not depend on whether we personally approve of them. I have no desire to become the unpaid educator in every relationship I have, especially when the other person has no interest in learning.

This does not mean I expect perfection from people. I am not looking for some imaginary group of perfectly progressive, perfectly informed, perfectly empathetic human beings who never say the wrong thing or hold an outdated belief. I had outdated beliefs myself that I have had to examine and discard, because growing as a person requires being willing to discover that something you once believed was wrong. What matters to me is the willingness to grow.

I want people who can be confronted with new information and think about it instead of immediately attacking the person who brought it to them. I want people who can recognize prejudice in themselves without collapsing into defensiveness. I want people who care enough about the world around them to remain curious about it, because I find that kind of openness incredibly beautiful.

This is one of the reasons I have become more selective about who I keep close as I get older. I no longer see having a large social circle as evidence that a person is doing well socially, and I certainly do not believe that keeping everyone around simply because they have always been there is a virtue. I would rather have a small number of people whose values make me feel good about being connected to them than surround myself with people whose attitudes repeatedly make me question whether I even respect them.

I want to respect the people I love.

That sounds simple, but it has become incredibly important to me. I want to look at my friends, my partner, the people I spend my time with, and feel proud of the kind of human beings they are. I want to admire their compassion, their willingness to learn, their ability to think critically, their openness toward people who are different from them, and their refusal to make cruelty into a personality trait.

Life is already complicated enough without voluntarily filling it with people who make the world feel smaller, harsher, and less humane.

I want people around me who make me think more deeply, who teach me things, who encourage me to stay curious, who can laugh without punching down, who can disagree without becoming hateful, and who understand that being a decent human being is more important than winning an argument. I want relationships where we can talk about the world without having to constantly defend someone's basic right to exist with dignity.

As I continue growing into the woman I want to be, I am becoming more comfortable with the fact that compatibility is not only about personality, chemistry, interests, or lifestyle. Values matter enormously to me, and so does the way someone responds to the world outside their own little bubble. I want my life to be surrounded by people who are trying to understand more rather than people who are proudly committed to understanding less.

I do not think that makes me demanding.

I think it means I finally understand that the people we allow close to us inevitably become part of the emotional environment we live in, and I want mine to be filled with curiosity, compassion, intelligence, openness, and humanity. I want to be able to look around at the people in my life and know that even when we disagree, I am surrounded by people who care about being fair, who care about learning, and who would rather question themselves than deliberately hurt somebody else.

That is the kind of company I want to keep now, and I am no longer embarrassed to say that it is a standard.

Thankful for your presence, Neja