My partner smirks as he watches people's faces as we walk up the mall. “You've been judged,” he says. He thinks its funny that people stare at me, looking me over from top to bottom. I guess I just don't conform to their ideal of how people should dress. Maybe they don't think my brightly coloured clothes are 'normal'. And since I put pink streaks in my hair I get judged even more. I think it's funny too, so it's like water off a duck's back to me. It's not be that has a problem.
What is it that makes us judge others? The simple answer is social conditioning. The not so simple answer is something that we have to look deep into our own psyche and analyze by peeling away the layers....if we feel compelled to do so. Most of us don't want to go there. Most of us try to drown out the little voice within by turning on the tv as soon as we walk in the door, or having the radio on or some other distraction that helps us avoid being us, or just 'being'. How many of us are on the run, busy, busy, busy? Most of us. We can make excuses about the need to earn money to get security, or all sorts of well established, socially inflicted excuses, but the reality is that none of those excuses are valid. We all live and we all die. How big our retirement fund is now will leave no trace after we're gone. What matters then?
At our local Gratitude Group we were asked what would we do if we had just twenty minutes until the world ended. Most of us said we'd want to be with our loved ones and friends. *Beverly was spot on when she said life is about relationships. How we relate to people is what makes us who we are and what makes memories. How many memories do we have that don't involve other people? When we're on our death bed, will we be thinking about how much real estate we never got around to buying, or will we just be wanting peace and love?
So what the heck has that got to do with judging others? I'm getting to that... If what's important is peace, love and relationships, then why would we judge someone by how wealthy or poor they are, how fat or skinny they are, what colour they are, what their sexual preferences are, what their religious beliefs are.... NONE of that matters! We compare others to what we've been conditioned to accept as normal, and we judge whether others are better than, worse than, or equal to us. What matters is 'being' us. And let them be too. What is it to us if someone makes different choices to us? To find peace we need to be free to be ourselves and stop judging others... for any reason.
Here's a challenge: For 24 hours be totally aware of the judgments you make of others. When you get a judgmental thought, ponder why you had that thought. If you struggle with the answers, it's not your fault. The ego controls our thoughts, not us. We need to drop the ego and 'be'. Can you 'drop it'?
*Names are changed for privacy reasons.
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