People can be so cruel sometimes. I am so very sorry about what has been caused by the people in your life.

None of us has been gifted with infinite knowledge and freedom. Both our knowledge and freedom are limited by trillions of big and little things.

Some we are aware of. Some are hidden from us because we only remember a tiny fraction of our past. And there are unconscious needs and hurts that shape us too.

So our freedom of choice is quite limited.

Maybe a concrete example will help. There was a lady who rejected many men who were trying to date her. They seemed like nice people but at some point she rejected them.

Years later while talking to a psychologist she revealed that her father abused her terribly. He was a man with black hair.

Upon reflection, this lady discovered that all the men she rejected were men with black hair. She was not aware of this. She was drawn to men with black hair but also repulsed by them.

This is an example of an unconscious force working within a person, pushing and pulling them without their being aware of it.

Things like this limit our freedom. Whatever you do in life, you invariably do the very best you can, given everything influencing you at the moment.

Does that mean we always do the very best? No. But it means we primarily do the very best we can, given everything influencing us moment to moment.

Since no one can know the trillions of things influencing you, they can often attribute your behavior to a flaw in your character when in fact it is circumstances that is behind what you did.

That is why it is insulting not only to you, but an insult to truth and fairness when they judge you harshly.

They are not in your shoes. The trillions of things influencing them are not the same as the ones influencing you. They don't have your past or life history.

You cannot ever truthfully and fairly be reduced to a label, such as the label "bad person." The trillions of things that make up who you are cannot be squeezed into a few words like that.

Although I don't know you, I do know that in your life since childhood, you have done countless little and big acts of courage, little and big acts of generosity and kindness, like and big acts of intelligence. The people judging you now know none of these things.

If they think of you in labels, they are committing acts of over-simplificiation, as if the richness, complexity, height and depth of you could be reduced to something as tiny and puny as a label.

People can be hypocritical too. We all make mistakes. I make many each day! But some people attribute their mistakes to "circumstances" while they judge the mistakes of others as "flaws in character." This is a double standard.

And on the subject of mistakes . . . There and mistakes and then there are big mistakes.

A couple of men in the last 100 years caused the destruction of tens of millions of men, women and children through forced genocide and campaigns of forced starvation.

Now that is something really horrible.

Our mistakes do not usually result in the destruction of millions of lives, or hundreds of thousands, or tens of thousands or thousands or hundreds. In the grand panorama of life our mistakes are usually pretty small.

I think of these things when I find myself beating myself up over something and it helps me.

I don't know if this would help you or others but hopefully someone on these Forums will see your post and respond with better words than my poor words.

And I hope that with time you will come to see in the good in yourself and treasure yourself as a human being!