Where are all the good people?

I went to my usual hair dresser in Kuantan. Due to the lockdown, his salon was closed for months, so that his credit/debit card machine was not working. I didn’t have enough cash with me. But he knew that I usually paid with a card so he said he will give me his account number and I can transfer the money to him once I am home.

I was aghast. I asked him what if I ran away to Kuala Lumpur without paying? He will never be able to find me. 😁 He said he trusted me; I’ve been going to his salon for years now. I felt quite pleased that I inspired this kind of trust in him. He then said that as much as there are bad people in the world, there are also good people around.

That got me thinking. He must be right. All humans can’t be bad. In fact, I know a few good people. Too few, unfortunately. Because as I look back on my life, I realise the unfortunate truth that most people I have met are bad. I don’t know whether this is due to my bad luck, or my karma or merely my perception of people. 

I have been robbed at knife point, cheated of money, back-stabbed, taken advantage of, bad-mouthed, blamed for things I didn’t do, not given credit for the things I did, been the subject of racial prejudice, made fun of for my skin colour; the list can just go on. 

I had goals and ambitions once. Now my only ambition in life is to become a self-sustaining hermit. The self-sustaining part is the tricky part because it requires me to draw an income which means I have to get a job, which means interacting with people, which inevitably means trouble. 

Whatever the reason, my fault or theirs, all these incidents have made me the cynic and misanthrope that I am today. All said and done, I am glad that some people view me as the good guy. I certainly try.