Now I Like Good People

We choose people for certain purposes⎯for friendship, for talents, for business or professional ability, for qualities of character. There are some whose services we never see, and some whose impact is very personal, but virtually all persons have some qualities and abilities that make some contribution to the total. We do much for each other. We enrich life for each other. We owe each other much, even if only for the privilege of companionship. We also cause problems for each other. Virtually all people disappoint us at times (and we even disappoint ourselves). But despite faults and imperfections all of us need each other. For good or ill, for better or worse, constructively or otherwise, we all play our part. And in all this appreciation and disappointment, in all this variability, what do we look for? What can we count on? A partial answer is suggested by S.B. Freehof that seems exceedingly significant: “Years ago I preferred clever people,” he said. “There was a joy in beholding . . . a mind . . . bearing thought quickly translated into words, or ideas expressed in a new way. I find now that my taste has changed. Verbal fireworks often bore me. They seem motivated by self-assertion and self-display. I now prefer another type of person: one who is considerate, understanding of others, careful not to break down another person’s self-respect, . . . My preferred person today is one who is always aware of the needs of others, of their pain and fear and unhappiness, and their search for self-respect . . . I once liked clever people. Now I like good people.”¹ “Goodness is richer than greatness,” said Edwin Hubbel Chapin. “[It] consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward things we are.”² It is good to be clever, to be talented, to be entertaining, but what is not good is not great⎯not even desirable⎯and certainly not safe. “Nothing can make a man truly great but being truly good . . .”³ “Now I like good people.”¹