I didn’t realize it until later in life, but there were quite a few influential people in my childhood who spent a large amount of their time judging other people. Judgements like:
You’re fat, you must be lazy and not care about yourself.
You have tattoos, you must be a delinquent and do drugs
You’re children are running around the restaurant, you must be a bad parent
You didn’t go to college, you’ll never amount to anything
And so on and so forth. They had an opinion about everybody and everything and the good opinions were few and far between. So obviously, hearing this as a child I believed it to be true, and worse yet I learned that it was my job to pass judgement on other people as well. Which I did. However, as I got older and was exposed to more people with varying ways of thinking and approaching things, I discovered that this was not how everybody went through their days. There were actually people out there who would see people and instead of instantly leaping to what was “clearly” their shortcomings, they found something good in the person. Or gave them the benefit of the doubt if they were acting poorly. I instantly liked this way of thinking much better and felt uncomfortable and mean whenever my brain would automatically start judging people.
So I began to attempt to change the way that my brain thought. If I saw someone that was out running but going really slow, I would instantly say to myself, “With how slow you’re going, why are you even running, just walk and stop pretending.” Then I would feel bad that I had thought. Then, for the first time in my life, I would actually let myself feel bad instead of squashing that emotion down. Then I would correct myself and say, “No matter how slow they’re going, at least they’re trying. Good for them!” Despite the fact that no one else knew that these thoughts were going through my head the very act of calling myself out on it and consciously changing my thought made me feel better. After a while I started to get better at this, but every so often there would be a bad day and the judgments would come out in full force. By the end of the day I would feel dirty inside and not like who I was. So then I would spend the next couple of days trying to repair the damage.
It was like a constant war going on in my head. I’m sure that at times I must have either looked like I was completely crazy, or that I had a migraine because I was so busy arguing with myself. Luckily, most of this was going on in high school and at that point I was so depressed that if I wasn’t actively engaged in school, work or theater I was usually alone. Actually, now that I think about it, that probably made it worse . . .
Any who, it’s been a battle that I’ve fought for a long time, and I’m now almost exclusively on the winning side. I find that I’m happier when I look for the good in people instead of the bad. However, I slip up some days more than others and Judgey McJudgerson rears her ugly head. That’s what I call her. I imagine she looks something like this.
Recently I’ve discovered a pattern for when I slip up the most. Whenever I’m feeling bad about myself, Judgey McJudgerson has a lot to say. A LOT! It’s almost as if she pops up to put everyone around me down in order to make me feel better. Why do we do that? Why do we think that pushing someone else down will pull us up. In reality it just sinks you down further, which causes you to pull others down more, which sinks you further, etc. It’s a vicious cycle, and it’s certainly not a good way to live. I for one feel significantly worse at the end of the day when McJudgerson has held sway in my head space for most of the day.
I just finished reading, The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal – which is a fantastic book by the way – and one of the chapters that stood out to me the most was the one in which a woman is being drug out of the city to be stoned and Joshua stops the guards, picks up a rock and says something to the effect of, “Let he who has not sinned, cast the first stone.” Now I’m not the least bit religious, which I’m sure is abundantly clear from the fact that I’m quoting Christopher Moore instead of the Bible, but there’s really something to be said for that sentiment. Who are we to judge others, and doesn’t that judgment really say more about ourselves than the person we’re judging? Maybe it’s our own actions that we should be examining before turning our eyes and thoughts onto someone else. It’s a work in progress.