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.

Arnold Bennett

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

Jane Austen