Still Betting on the Good

By Yana Gulati

My dad has a pessimistic saying: people always disappoint. Now that has come from years of corporate work and climbing that has maybe beaten down his view of good in people. But that lesson really came to sucker punch me in the face when someone I wholeheartedly trusted betrayed me. It's not my story to tell, so I don’t want to go into detail for the sake of protecting those involved. The bottom line is that my best friend had her world turned upside down by a boy we called our brother, who was our protector, and whose family considered us their own. He crossed a line we never thought he was capable of crossing, and when we confronted him with his wrongdoing, he morphed his own story to save face. Rumors flowed and boys started taking sides, making lame excuses for horrendous actions and a cover-up that sustained the pain. So, that climactic weekend opened my eyes – I learned that my dad was right: at the end of the day, people do disappoint. And the worst thing is I now see all the times I had false faith. Maybe I was the ignorant optimist for believing that people could show up in the right ways for others.

My gut tells me it's wrong to look at people with a large warning sign reminding me they will likely disappoint. It is a perspective and tactic that is defensive and protective, and that just feels unnatural to me. But maybe that's what we all need: to think about ourselves and be ready to just flee so things are easier. To have no expectations so that they cannot even disappoint and leave a larger gap I have to reckon with. The more I think about it, the more I see that I have been especially disappointed by the people I love and trust. I know my dad is right: his words echo in my head. But I just hope maybe my dad’s saying will disappoint me too.

Reckoning with the Pessimism - Choosing to Believe

It's ironic and paradoxical that I want to assume that we all have good hearts after everything I have said. Maybe sometimes we have to be disappointed and hurt and somewhat destroyed because we open up and assume people have good hearts. It does not make sense, but I simply cannot choose that option. To get to experience this world, walls down, fully open to it all, even if it means getting hurt, maybe that is the point. Maybe the alternative, the defensive armor of cynicism, is not protection but self-imposed exile.

I believe that life, at its core, isn’t about shielding ourselves from disappointment; it’s about choosing how we respond to it. To expect the worst in people may offer the illusion of protection, but it comes at the cost of something greater: the possibility of being proven wrong in the best way. Yes, people fail us. They betray, they falter, they let us down in ways we never imagined. But if we live as though that is all they are capable of, we deny ourselves the greatness of witnessing them rise above it.

So maybe life is not about bracing for disappointment, but about stepping into the world with an open heart anyway. Not because people will never fail us, but because sometimes they won’t—because sometimes, against all odds, they show up, they fight for what is right, they love without condition. And if we close ourselves off in fear, we forfeit the chance to witness those moments, to be a part of them, to believe in them.

Maybe the answer is not to expect perfection, but to embrace the full spectrum of human nature—flawed, fragile, and yet, at times, astonishingly good. To believe, not in the absence of disappointment, but in the moments that make hope worth holding onto.

So back to the start. What about the betrayal and disappointment that started this very reflection? Forgiveness is not about excusing what was done or pretending the hurt didn’t matter, it’s about choosing to release its grip on me. It doesn’t mean forgetting, and it certainly doesn’t mean letting people off the hook, but maybe it means making space for something other than bitterness, and to be honest I am not fully sure what that is. Maybe it's opening up more to life: like when I walked back into my dorm, and a boy I barely knew who had seen me disheveled and stressed earlier in the day stopped to ask me if I was okay and have a long conversation with me. Just that reminded me that disappointment doesn’t tell the whole story of people. Yes, some will let me down in ways I can’t yet wrap my head around, but others, even those I least expect, will show up. Maybe forgiveness is less about absolving those who failed me and more about choosing not to let their failure define what I see in the world. It’s a choice to believe that, even in the wreckage, goodness still exists and that sometimes, it’s as simple as someone asking if you’re okay when you didn’t even realize how much you needed to hear it.