Taylor Swift, Sidewalk Politics, and the Nature of Evil

Living Happy

Hegel (this 19th-century German idealist) is often quoted as saying, “Evil resides in the very gaze which perceives Evil all around itself.”

I can’t find that actual original source for that quote and I’ve looked. It might be one of those paraphrases/translations that sort of take a life of its own.

But I’m into it right now.

Here’s the thing: if you go around your whole life looking for nefarious intent, you’ll only see nefarious intent.

Or maybe the simplest way to say it is that if you expect evil all the time, you’re going to get evil all the time.

This doesn’t mean that evil isn’t out there. It doesn’t mean that good people can’t do bad things or that bad people can’t do good things.

It just means that if you go around having the expectation of evil, you’re going to find it.

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I wrote this back in 2023 for a Be Brave Friday, that Hegel “quote'“ made me think about it and its still how I feel.

It’s about this time when I was totally and completely not seen.

The two women were walking down the sidewalk toward the library, heading toward me. I knew one of them. Everyone in town knows her. I’d met with her a few months ago, confused about why she’d wanted to meet me. Whatever the reason, it was obvious that I’d failed the test the way I do sometimes.

I’d reached out to her again. She never responded. I tried one more time. Nothing.

Maybe her email was chaos. I know mine is. I didn’t worry about it. I tend not to stress about that sort of thing.

But now as she and this other woman walked by, she kept her head down, talking.

Maybe she really didn’t see me, but she’s not a woman who misses much. And I saw them and I’m blind in one eye.

However, invisibility was a possibility because on our sidewalk, her friend didn’t move over so that we could go by single file. She bumped into me the way you bump into people in a high school hallway when you don’t like them too much.

Right then, I made an assumption: I assumed that the ignoring, the bump, they were on purpose.

“Wow,” I thought.

I put my foot back on the sidewalk, kept striding like Beyoncé was playing in the background, and shook it off like Taylor Swift, swallowing something unspeakable, a tiny bit of pain that comes from not being ignored, but also disrespected, that feeling that some people give you when you realize that they wanted something from you and you didn’t provide it and now you aren’t worth sharing the sidewalk with.

But that’s an assumption—a horrible assumption. I have no idea about their intents.

It could have been something totally different, something that had nothing to do with me but with whatever they were talking about, engrossed in. They could be suffering in ways I can’t even imagine. So, they can have the sidewalk if they need it. It’s okay.

Here’s the thing that’s bigger than those two women and me. It’s hard sometimes to only be seen when someone wants something from you. It’s hard sometimes to be ignored.

And that may not be what happened with me and that woman, but it happens all the time to people.

That breaks my heart. We’re all better than that. We all can be.

Real connections are important, those kinds of connections that stay hard and fast and true, the kind that don’t create unspeakable feelings that you have to gulp down, but the kind that you get to sing out, strong and real.

You can’t get those if you choose not to see other people.

You can’t get those if you expect everyone to be evil.

In this world, we have so many choices to see—to really see—other people beyond labels, beyond the bubbles of our own experience and our wants.

We can choose to be cheerleaders, leaders, friends, bailsmen, helpers, students, teachers, people who give others a second chance or even a third one. And we can choose not to.

We don’t have to assume everyone is out to get us.

We don’t have to assume that everyone is being mean on purpose.

We don’t have to assume that everyone is biased or greedy or wicked or ignoring us intentionally.

When gossip about celebrities or even people in our own town goes viral like some did this weekend on TikTok? We don’t have to assume it’s right.

We can test our assumptions. And maybe we need to when our default is outrage about tiny things. And maybe we need to when we just believe gossip or scandal or lies.

We can’t control the whole internet, but we can control (or try to) ourselves and our reactions and assumptions. We can test out our theories, look for facts and truths.

So, the next time I see that lady, I’m going to loudly say hello. That’s what being brave can be about, right? Being seen. And seeing others, too, even when they don’t see you any longer.

We don’t have to look for evil everywhere. We can recognize it when we see it, all right. But we have to remember to also recognize good.

*All this photos are from this weekend.

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QUICK NOTE

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COMFORTING

I also have a once-a-week Substack over here and it’s mellow and I share a poem (not my own, God forbid, there’s nothing comforting about those), soup recipe, and other comforting things there. It’s just quietly hanging out there. You can come hang out, too.