too good

The expression seems like a paradox. How can there be too much of a good thing? Oh, but there can be, and I do not mean this from the context of punishing self-denial. It has taken me a really long time to figure this one out, even though I have long known about Aristotle's golden mean, by which one understands that there is vice in the exaggeration of a virtue. I knew it intellectually, but I was unable to understand its practical applications.
If a person is good, it is likely that they are also naive, in that their "good perspective" does not see other people's evil; rather, they are only focused on being good. This is all very nice, but it is not realistic in this world, where there are people who prey on exactly such souls. There is a reason why it is said to be innocent as a dove but shrewd as a snake. The good person will be going about their business, and suddenly find themselves in a situation - not of their making - which is, for lack of better word, bad. So, then the good person is tainted.
However, in most cases, the bad situation can work as a vaccination for future reference: one begins to learn to be more cautious, which isn't to say less trusting, but more careful of those one chooses to trust. There is room for love, but this love must first be earned. It is not given away to just anyone, though one may feel one has plenty of it.
And this is where there can be too much of a good thing: if one is good, one wants to err on the side of giving too much instead of too little. But not all giving is good. One must discern whether the sacrifice makes sense. Or whether one will end up being taken advantage of.
A friend of mine was saying today that his mother still tells him: "The innocent suffer." He said the point of this saying is that the innocent might not be summoning the bad experience of their own accord, but they may end up in the wrong place at the wrong time: the moral of the story being that one must see with one's six senses, not just with one's eyes and mind - in order to avoid such situations.
One must be shrewd.
This lesson is hard to learn because some people try to bury it. They say, "It doesn't matter what you do, good will conquer," or they might use the same words and say, "The innocent suffer," but they may be the kind of people who go around victimising themselves on purpose - so "the innocent suffer" sounds like it is not the truth, but the whining of incompetence. So, the message of this post is: look alive!

Elements: heart frame: minitoko.