It's always better to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Most people are good people. They aren't trying to offend you. They aren't trying to inconvenience you. They are just trying to live their lives the best way they know how. We all are, and sometimes along the way we hurt each other without meaning to.
The classic example is a story I think we've all heard. Forgive me if I don't get it quite right. A man is on a train, trying to collect his thoughts before a big meeting. But he can't focus, because there is a father and his young children on the train, and the children are running rampant, screaming, bouncing off the walls. Meanwhile the father sits there staring straight ahead, making no move to stop them. The businessman is appalled. How selfish can a person be? Doesn't he see the businessman there, trying so hard to work? Doesn't he realize his children's behavior is inappropriate for public? Doesn't he care about anything but himself? The businessman tries to hold it in, tries to ignore the children, but finally he can't take it anymore and he snaps at the father, asking him what the children's problem is.
The father looks up at him with a bleary stare. He apologizes. He explains that the children's mother just died in the hospital an hour before. "I think they just don't know how to handle it," he says, "and I guess I don't either."
Better to be like a person in an old Reader's Digest story: A woman at an airport buys a package of cookies to enjoy during her flight. She sits down to wait for her plane, and soon someone sits behind her. She hears a bag open and crunching noises; she looks over to see the person eating her bag of cookies. She's indignant but she doesn't want to make a scene. Not sure what else to do, she reaches over and takes a cookie. The stranger takes a second cookie. She takes a second cookie. Together they eat the bag, trading off turns. The whole time, she is steaming. The nerve of this person! What kind of weirdo just takes your food and starts eating it?? Finally they get down to the last cookie. The guy breaks it in half, hands half to her, and heads off to throw the bag away. She doesn't see him again before she leaves on her flight.
When she gets on her flight... she finds the bag of cookies in her purse. He'd just happened to buy the same brand. She was eating HIS cookies. SHE was the weirdo stealing a stranger's food--yet he handled it with courtesy and calm. He must have thought it was strange, but maybe he figured she was starving or something... who knows? Instead of judging her, he shared the cookies with her willingly, trusting that there was some reason she needed them.
Granted, some good old fashioned communication would have cleared the whole thing up. That's what eventually solved the problem on the train in the first story. If the man had spoken up and explained, "I'm sorry, but these are actually my cookies..." she would have looked in her purse and realized what was going on much sooner. They could have laughed about it together. I still think he handled it well, but speaking up is always a good thing, especially when there's some kind of misunderstanding going on.
Give people the benefit of the doubt. Most people have good intentions. And one awesome tip from Relationship Education: if someone does something wrong that offends you, don't judge a person harshly or view them as less or selfish or foolish--chances are VERY high there is something going on in their lives that you don't know about, or they've just misunderstood something, or they haven't realized what they are doing is a problem. We all come from different family backgrounds and cultures, and something that is unspeakable to us personally might be completely normal to someone else. They won't know they are hurting you unless you speak up.
