True Colors

There have been so many times in the past month that I've heard of someone's worst side coming out.  Someone snapping and saying something they wouldn't usually say or doing something that I knew they were ashamed of.  Whenever I heard about these things, the people around me would say things like 

"well, I guess that her true colors came out"

 or 

"Well, that really showed his true character." 

I HATE that.

I hate that one mistake can change someone's entire opinion about a person.  No matter how much good someone has done, if they say or do something wrong, suddenly that's their "true self". 

I think that we should stop judging people by the worst things they do, and start making judgments based on the best things they do.  

Someone's character isn't based on the instances where we slip up.  Even though we should all stick to our values and be our best selves as much as possible... we all make mistakes, and we all have regrets.  We can't let those mistakes define us, and we can't let others mistakes define the way we see them.  

Character is about who we are consistently striving to be. 

***obviously, there are some mistakes that are bigger than others and we really do have to be careful about trusting people again.  Not every mistake can be ignored.  I'm talking about the ones that can - words we regret saying, small actions where we weren't as kind as we wish we would have been, etc.***