Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I want to understand people and why they do things. This applies especially to people I know or interact with, or to people who I feel connected to. That connection can be from multiple thin strands, or someone who I know barely if at all who is close to, or has significant influence on, one of the people I love.

One consequence of this appears to be that, especially if the people aren't available [at the time or at all], I speculate, based on some combination of what I know [about that person or people in general] and a desire to believe that something other than inchoate malice is at work. That is, I'm prepared to think "well, we know that P doesn't like Q, so zie might have done this in order to avoid Q/stop R from helping Q/etc." but not "S did that because zie is a supervillain/possessed by the devil."

This sort of speculative quasi-analysis isn't likely to be applied to my partners--I can ask them what's going on. It's more likely to be someone who one of my partners or good friends is musing about, or a relative or supervisor.

I think I usually manage to label these speculations as what they are. I hope so. And I hope I don't later treat them as actual data because they were stated out loud or on screen/paper, heard or seen by me in the course of this, and not refuted. But memory is weird.