Seeing someone for the first time or even the tenth time, unless we have taken the time to get to know them gives us little to know grounds for judging them but all too often we let a first appearance be our marker for what we think that person to be without really knowing anything about them at all. No one should judge another. It is not up to us to be their judge. (Except in a court of law for crimes they may be charged with; and then you need proof beyond doubt to make that judgment.)
Everyone’s life and
their reaction to it is their own personal experience. The way you see things or I see things may very well not be the way that guy or gal we are making judgments about sees things. We don’t know anything about them. We have not experienced their life or life situations. We do not know their thoughts, how they perceive things in their life and things going on around them. We don’t know what they are feeling or the conflicts that may be going on inside them in their everyday life. We don’t know where they have been or what they have been through or how those events have marked or marred their life. For most of us the really bad scars are invisible scars so how can we know and criticize another. So how can we judge others from a distance, without ever having walked in their shoes? We do it all the time and it is wrong.Every time we judge someone else, point a finger at them, there are three more pointing right back at us. We might want to take a real long and serious look at our mirror image first before we let our condescending attitude (Yes, we all have one) make a fool out of us because we made false judgments from our preconceived self-righteous perception. I’ve seen it happen, I’ve done it and I’ve had it happen to me. It is a very painful experience from either side of the mirror. So why do we do it before we truly have the slightest clue about another person, other than maybe a few rumors because someone else made a snap judgment first and started telling tales and spreading lies? They probably didn’t know either. It is a very shallow, mindless and heartless way for any of us to behave.
We sure don’t like it when we are under the microscope, the eye of the beholder; it hurts when someone is dissecting us, being critical without knowing the facts and bases their judgment on supposition. Assuming can get us in a whole heap of trouble and puts us in a very bad light; and that doesn’t say a whole lot of good about us. To make judgments and then spread our self-righteous opinion around is a form of bullying. You are verbally beating someone up. The tongue is indeed much like a two edged sword, it cuts in both directions and attitude, our attitude is the ammunition that feds the weapon of indiscretion. That is not a good thing. So what gives us the right to judge others and why do we stoop so low as to do it?
We can probably come up with a thousand and one excuses for our judgmental attitude but bottom line
most of us do it because our “I” gets in our way, our ego.When we are finding fault with others, judging them we see our self as better in some way; it is self-righteousness. We all like to feel good about our self and so we start pointing out the mistakes, bad choices, less educated, less able, less affluent circumstances of others, their mentality, physical condition and appearance, their job, or lack of one, and which side of the track they live on and what community programs and associations they belong to, the activities they participate in; and we measure them on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the best and self, of course. The lower we can place someone on that scale the better we feel about our self. It doesn’t have to be the truth, it only has to appease our own wounded ego and feed our condescending attitude. More often than not we do it to override our own hidden insecurities we don’t want anyone else to know about. Having this sort of judgmental, condescending mentality is a very shallow way to live our life and we will never find true happiness in being that way.
This, however, in no way means we should not use common sense, a healthy dose of discernment when choosing those we associate our self with on a regular basis. We all need to use a measure of caution to keep us from making our own wrong choices and help us to avoid and stay out of circumstances that may harm us but we need to avoid being cliquish too. We need to uplift others and encourage others, not judge them before we have given them a chance or heard their story from their own mouth. That person we scoff might have been the best friend we could ever have had we given them the opportunity and not put them down and cast them off before we even had a real clue as to what we thought we knew.
It is all well and good to try to help others as long as we aren’t doing it for self-gratification. Believe it or not, it is very hard to take a sliver out of someone else’s eye until you get the mote out of your own. Nobody likes to hear all that “I am,” “I did,” “I can,” “look at me so you can be just as wonderful,” out of our own mouth. Let someone else give you the accolades if you have earned them. We probably truthfully aren’t really “all that.” And waiting to really be that someone else, that someone we think we are, is a waste of the person and talents you really are and truly have. We really all ought to take a good long look in the mirror and have a real straight talk with that person smiling back at us before we point a finger or make one judgment about anyone else.