The Terrible Mistake Of Judging Others
We have all made the terrible mistake of judging others. However, why do we define such habitual behavior in these terms? Every time we pass judgment on someone, we turn into people who create one or several stories that may be far from the reality on which we have invented them.
Think of that mother who always takes her son to school late. Perhaps you will judge her as a bad mother or as stupid and unable to get out of bed early or perhaps as a person who is unable to organize herself. Have you ever stopped to think if all this is true? An explanation is not always necessary, the one that is thought to be the most logical is taken for granted.
Without realizing it, you hypothesize what happens in another person’s life. Make the mistake of completing information you don’t know with a story you invented. You are wrong without being aware of it.
The reason why we judge so hastily is to be found in our ego. Consciously or unconsciously, we need to feel better than others or to express our refusal in the face of a certain attitude. By judging, we close the doors of empathy.
When we talk about empathy towards others, many think they have this characteristic. “If a friend unleashes with me and needs my advice, I am able to put myself in her shoes, to understand and help her, without falling into the temptation to judge her”. With people who don’t know each other, the same doesn’t happen.
We need to feel more, to feel special, different. We prefer to observe from a cautious distance that person who we believe is not doing well. We do this because we feed our ego and somehow feel better about ourselves.
Have you sometimes felt lonely because no one understood you? Surely, on more than one occasion, you have thought “I wish they knew what I feel, what I’m going through”. All the people we judge think the same without knowing what really happens to them. Is it true or not that it is very different to take the point of view of others?
Do you think that even if you were right and the other person was doing wrong from your point of view, why blame them? You don’t know what he experienced in the past. Which of us is perfect? We all have the right to be wrong, and also to enjoy this possibility.
If you don’t know, ask
Let’s go back to the example of the mother neglecting her child, or so it seems to us. Perhaps she lives with a husband who abuses her, perhaps she suffers from depression, or perhaps she has recently lost a family member or loved one. We like these explanations less, because they force us to involve ourselves, to awaken our conscience: they are not easy.
If you see her so distracted, if her attitude amazes you so much and if you condemn her, why don’t you ask her anything? If you are suffering from any of the situations listed above, you would probably like someone to worry about you. Because maybe nobody does.
It could be an occasion that will start a beautiful friendship or, simply, a situation in which to reach out to another person, so that he can grab it if he feels the need. Surely, at least once, you would have liked them to do the same for you. You would have liked that, instead of ignoring you or judging you negatively, someone had approached you and shown understanding.
However, why are we so afraid to ask? By doing this, all our judgments would crumble, we would have to eliminate the patterns we have built in our mind and perhaps our ego would suffer. Somehow, we protect ourselves by making a huge mistake. To criticize.
We tend to make the mistake of judging others. The time has come to show our interest in others, to find an explanation if we feel the need, without inventing it, and to be patient and wait until we can know what happens and accept it.
