“What fun is it to sit on sideways in such dust and heat”, blurted my husband as we passed by two pretty girls dressed up and sitting on rickety chairs on the roadside. The road was dusty, and it was indeed a hot afternoon hour. “What makes you think, it is their choice to sit here?” “I don’t know”, he mentioned casually.
“Well if you don’t know, how could you be sure in judging them for being dumb to sit here?”
“What could it be then”, he snapped giving me “don’t think you are too smart” look.
“There can be so many reasons, most obvious one being; they might be waiting for someone who seems to be stuck somewhere. Tired of standing; pulled the chair from the shop on side. You know it is not very unusual for people to get stuck and keep someone waiting. Remember someone waiting for you also”, I replied giving him back “I do am smart” look.
While he chose to switch the discussion lest more details get popped up, however we both agreed that we unconsciously judge so much about people and situation related to or not related to us.
Human mind loves to cook stories and hence for every still frame around, it brings up something on its own. While creating these stories, there are villains, heroes and situation created that may exist nowhere in reality. This habit of creating stories makes us to conclude and make opinions about someone and something.
Judging is a slow poison that kills the connections and relations in our life. It can be professional team, family, friends or mere acquaintance. When we judge someone, we create labels and use these labels for our reactions and decisions. People and situations in life are not that static to be limited by some still label.
Judging mindset and attitude on one hand influences the way we deal with life around us; it also impacts the way we behave. We end up pretending, hiding and making up for the fear of being judged in one way or other. Our natural self gets burdened and crushed in the aspiration to get the best verdict for ourselves from people around us.
While our mind races to label someone or something around us, we can reach to one of below before making final decision.
Judicious: Not every person and every situation need our opinion. We can leave few things for others to take care. It is good for us to take some break and peace rather than being a commentator 24*7.
Understand: Try and get information about the situation and person before concluding. If we need to be involved in a situation, we should be in no hurry to conclude. Talk, learn and find before finalizing the conclusion.
Debate: When your mind races on one track, give it the fodder to debate for other reasons. Thinking always from one perspective can never give us the holistic and rational view.
Guess/Gauge/Gather: Avoid taking guess and reach a conclusion, rather we should gather and gauge more on the details and facts. Knowing small fact about someone cannot make us understand the person as a whole. Make a rule that we will not take liberty to pass judgement about someone till we have atleast double digit one to one long enough conversations with the person.
Empirical: Don’t accept a reason given by your mind only because some person, some categorisation makes you feel so. As life is full of variations, we could not decide about all situations using same yardstick. Facts should always be placed above the theories.
Living inside our mind and its stories keeps us captive of the fictional things which may not be real at all.
To end the dialog here with the great words from Dale Carnegie
“Even god doesn’t propose to judge a man till his last days, why should you and I”