judgment

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I grew up in a family situation in which judging others--and often making fun of them--was pretty much the norm.  I don't see that as an awful part of who my family members were, for that's what they learned somewhere along the line about how to treat and deal with other human beings.  Their judgment was more a reflection of their own fears and insecurities than it was a statement about who the other people were.  It took me quite a long time to realize just how inappropriate and harmful this habit was, and it took me just as long to leave behind the habit of judging others myself.

When I judge someone, after all, I'm almost always looking at an incomplete picture of their actions and their motivations.  It's easy to get angry at the person who just took your parking space, but you know, there's a very good chance that he didn't see you, or that something terrible just happened in his life that keeps him from seeing things that he normally would have seen.

Our tendency to judge seems to be based partly on our need to be right--we see someone else do something that we don't believe is right, so we judge them to be wrong.  The problem with this tendency, of course, is that our version of right is based upon our personal systems of belief--and what's right for us isn't necessarily right for others.  We may be tempted to convince ourselves that there's such a thing as a universal right and wrong, and that we are the enlightened ones who know what that universal right is, but the fact is that right and wrong are almost always matters of perspective and of beliefs.

Our tendency to judge also seems to be based upon our need to lift ourselves above other people to make ourselves feel better.  After all, if you just did something wrong and I can judge you harshly for that, while I personally didn't do anything wrong, then I'm somehow better off than you, I'm somehow more compassionate or more deserving or more courteous or more honest than you.  And that, for some reason, should make me feel better.

But judgment really ends up being nothing more than a way to put more distance between us as people.  It's just a way for us to find more cause for separation, more reasons not to come closer to another person, not to accept another person fully, not to become better friends with someone.  Judgment helps us to maintain our illusion that separation is good for us, our illusion that there are many good reasons for avoiding closer contact and closer relationships.

Judgment keeps us looking at life from a "right and wrong" perspective, without feeling the need or desire to understand what other people may be going through.  When I was young and I heard judgmental statements, those words made me feel that there never was a chance of becoming friends with the person or persons being judged.  Those people were worse than us, after all, and there was no reason to feel closeness, compassion, or friendliness with those people.

I've found over the years that judgment on my part has hurt me greatly.  There have been many great people that I've never come to know well because I judged them too early on too little evidence.  There have been situations that I've shut myself out of, relationships that I avoided, people that I never met, simply because I had this need to find something wrong in others.  Perhaps it was a defensive measure on my part, but I'm more convinced that it was more a question of ignorance that kept me from seeing things more clearly.

I try hard not to judge now, and I find that I see many more brilliant things these days, and I meet many more very cool people because I don't allow myself to create the obstacle of my judgment between me and anyone else.  Life with little judgment in it has become very pleasant, and I see people much more clearly and much more compassionately when I know that no matter what they do, I'm going to try to understand it rather than judge it.  When I set myself up as judge, then I put a tremendous burden on myself and on others whom I expect to live up to my expectations.  Life is much richer when I rid myself of such a useless and difficult burden.
   

   
When you are interested in other perspectives, it doesn’t imply, even slightly,
that you’re advocating them.  I certainly wouldn’t choose a punk rock lifestyle
or suggest it to anyone else.  At the same time, however, it’s really not my place
to judge it, either.  One of the cardinal rules of joyful living is that judging
others takes a great deal of energy and, without exception,
pulls you away from where you want to be.

Richard Carlson
 

When you feel offended, you're practicing judgment. . . What you
may not realize is that when you judge another person, you do not
define them.  You define yourself as someone who needs to judge others.

Wayne Dyer
   
  
  
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

Mother Teresa

 

Judge a tree by its fruit, not by its leaves.

Euripidea
 

People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.

Albert Camus
 
 

To the judgmental eye, everything is closed in definitive frames.
When the judgmental eye looks out, it sees things in terms of lines and squares.

John O'Donohue
  

Great Spirit, help me never to judge another until
I have walked in his moccasins for two weeks.

Sioux Indian Prayer
  

Whoever undertakes to set him or herself up as a judge of Truth
and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Albert Einstein
   
Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses,
more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.

Paul Valéry
   
It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he or she is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.

Arnold Bennett

It is very unfair to judge
any body’s conduct, without
an intimate knowledge
of their situation.

Jane Austen
   

    

The life in us is diminished by judgment far more frequently than by disease.
Our own self-judgment or the judgment of other people can stifle our
life-force, its spontaneity and natural expression.  Unfortunately, judgment
is commonplace.  It is as rare to find someone who loves us as we are
as it is to find someone who loves themselves whole.
Judgment does not only take the form of criticism.  Approval is also a form
of judgment.  When we approve of people, we sit in judgment of them as
surely as when we criticize them.  Positive judgment hurts less acutely
than criticism, but it is judgment all the same and we are harmed by it
in far more subtle ways.  To seek approval is to have no resting place,
no sanctuary.  Like all judgment, approval encourages a constant
striving.  It makes us uncertain of who we are and of our true value.
This is as true of the approval we give ourselves as it is of the approval
we offer others.  Approval can't be trusted.  It can be withdrawn at any
time no matter what our track record has been.  It is as nourishing of
real growth as cotton candy.  Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it.

Rachel Naomi Remen
    

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There is a higher Will operating most efficiently in this world, although most
of us are not privy to it.  When we make judgments that things are not happening
the way we think they should, this is the height of arrogance.  This is acting as
though our way is superior to the Higher Power's.  We're acting as though we
know better.  But do we actually know the cause and effect of everything
happening around us?  While we may share in creative power, until we have
merged our consciousness in the Creator, we are in absolutely no position to
judge when and how things happen.

Michael Goddart
   




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