We sometimes hear reminders: appreciate the good people.
The people who are kind to you, who message you regularly, who ask how you are, who support your ambitions, who want the best for you, the ones who are thoughtful and don't flare up, and will write sweetly to you, hoping you have a good night.
The advice can sound remote, mechanical, sentimental.
We suspect, surely there must be something wrong with these good people if we need reminders to appreciate them.
Surely, truly good people, people we should really bother with, assert their value without any need for artificial prompts.
But this is to forget something key about human nature, that we tend to categorically and very tragically reject, ignore, and trample upon goodness and niceness whenever it crosses our path.
We are spoiled children who fail to pay heed to most of the glories we're gifted, who care so much more for drama and pain than rest and sweetness.
There is no greater example of this than in our attitude to the beauty of our world.
We omit to notice springtime, the light through the trees, the sky at dusk, the lemons on the sideboard, the path through the forest, the colors of the sea at the shoreline.
We hardly paid attention to the summer or the dignity of autumn, and that's why we have collectively accorded such honor to those talented evocators of the world's sublimity: Cezanne, Renoir, Pissarro, van Gogh, Vermeer, der Rohe, Hammershøi, and so on.
