This prompt actually caught my attention cause I've often wondered about the true nature of people because you get to see some persons good for a season and express nad characters in another season so it got me wondering if some people are born good, with kindness running through our veins like an inheritance from heaven or something? Or are we shaped by darker instincts, selfish and cruel, merely tamed by rules and consequences? It’s a question I never fully answered until life showed me that people are both, and that what we become is often not just who we are, but what we go through per time.
I remember a man named Henry in my neighborhood. He was the kind of person people admired ,he was so selfless, humble, always ready to help. He worked at a community shelter, often staying long after hours just to make sure no one went to bed hungry. Everyone called him “Brother Henry” not because he was a pastor, but because he lived like one. He smiled easily, listened deeply, and gave with open hands.
But here's the shocking to part,if you had met Henry ten years earlier, you wouldn’t have recognized him, I'd say at that time you'd hate him sincerely because of how he behaved.
Back then, he was a different man violent, bitter, always in trouble with the law. He drank too much and am sure you know how drunkers are so much associated with making trouble and fighting often, he trusted no one. He had grown up in a broken home, raised in a neighborhood where survival was the only virtue taught.People said alot about him “Bad to the bone,” people said. “A lost cause.”
So what then actually changed him?
I'm quite certain it wasn’t overnight. It began with a single night where he broke down not because of fear, but because of something deeper, Guilt,Emptiness. He’d hurt someone he loved. That night, for the first time, he prayed. Not for freedom, but for forgiveness. And somehow, that cracked something open in him.
Years passed, and the man who once stole from the poor became a servant to them. He found faith. He found people who believed in him. And in time, he began to believe in himself too.
I tell this story because it taught me a powerful truth: people can change. We’re not chained forever to the worst versions of ourselves. And just as people can fall from goodness into hatred or cruelty, they can also rise from darkness into light.
So no, I don’t believe people are born bad. Nor do I believe we are born saints. I believe we are born with potentials,the potential to choose love or hate, compassion or cruelty. And what we choose depends on many things: how we’re raised, who we meet, what we suffer, and what we believe, generally the situation life presents to us.
Some grow up surrounded by love, yet turn bitter. Others grow up in pain, yet choose mercy.
What triggers those changes? Often, it’s pain. Loss. A crisis that strips away our comforts and forces us to confront who we are. But it can also be love, raw unconditional love that sees the good in us when we cannot or truth, when it’s finally told, even if it hurts.
In the end, we are not static in our life. We are stories still being written. And no chapter, no matter how dark, has to be the final one, there's good in every one.