Why were people depressed? There was no need to be, they just lacked a more positive attitude. Why were people so hard-up? Surely they could manage their finances a bit better and be nicely solvent? Why were people addicted to fags or alcohol? Couldn't they just control their cravings instead of giving in to them?
Nowadays of course remembering such sweeping opinions makes me cringe with embarrassment at my bottomless ignorance. My total unawareness of how other people think and feel and cope with life was breathtaking. Clearly I'd spent too much time with my parents' favourite reading matter, the Daily Mail.
Luckily decades of exposure to the realities of people's behaviour have demolished all those glib pronouncements and made me much more reluctant to pass comment on someone else's situation.
I can finally recognise the infinite complexities of other people's personalities, the tangled morass of needs, obligations and commitments their daily existence confronts them with, and all the myriad twists and turns of their life so far, and I realise I have barely a clue why they're the way they are or why they do what they do.
Now I just want to listen to people, to hear their own explanations of why they went downhill, why their lives went wrong, why they're struggling to cope. No sweeping judgments, no self-righteous homilies, just a sympathetic ear and the desire to understand the roots of their predicament.
You never know, I might even learn something.
