On being judgmental

I always thought that judging people and situations was a necessary evil. I thought it protected us from the unexpected. If I could know the character of a person by the first signs on new acquaintance, I could know whether I could trust them or not, whether they would bring me disappointment or joy.

I always thought that my ability to judge a person or situation was my greatest asset. I thought I was a psychic of sorts, that I could get to know the heart of a person right away.

As it turns out, I now believe I was only partially correct. The mistake was in translating the first impression to all areas or a person or situation. For instance, If, say, I met you one day, and you seemed absent and disinterested. I would’ve jumped to the conclusion that you were snob, nasty, and likely to hurt me.

Maybe yes. It is quite possible that your coldness was likely to hurt such a sensitive person as me. But I was wrong in labeling all of you based on those character traits.

You may be cold and disinterested, but you may be extremely smart and even caring if I ever have a problem and need immediate assistance. In fact, I may, at the beginning, need to keep you at arm’s length, while I get to know you better, so that I avoid taking your personal pet peeves personally. Maybe I should watch you interact with others so as to know that you’re not particularly snob toward me but treat everybody the same.

There are many aspects to a person: some good some bad. But I have been making the mistake of writing people off completely based on one-or-two peculiarities that I find annoying. If I judge everyone like that, I will always find something that annoys me.

But attitudes like mine, unfortunately, go beyond one-on-one relationships. Organizations, places, cultures, cuisines, situations and many areas of life are also judged with the same mentality. No wonder I find the world so violent and threatening.

Given my recent troubles with the organization I’ve been working with, I came to conclude that a large part of my suffering is rushing to judge situations, as either good or bad.

After much thinking, I realized that my situation with the contact woman seemed awful. But the manager was nice. She is making a mistake trusting her non-technical employee with this project. But it is giving me the opportunity to learn new skills that pay well in the work place. The bad-but-good list went on and on.

Then I realized that situations JUST are. Not good, awful, perfect, or terrible, but just are.

Instead of, for example, starting a job and being extremely happy that it is a great job, I should just think that IT IS a job. Some aspects of it will be good, some aspects will be bad, but in the end, the job JUST IS.

Same with people, most of them just are: good cooks, terrible skaters, great swimmers, good confidants, so-so conversationalists, good at math, bad at drawing, poor listeners, excellent bakers, etc., etc.

In sum, I should never put a person or a situation on either a pedestal or a pit. I should instead expect them to be a combo of qualities and faults. I should never expect that anything in my life can be judged in extremes. Good and evil are part of everything. There is no shortcut to knowing which mix I’m getting when meeting something or someone. I must get to know them slowly and take risks, cautiously so.

Yes, cautiously in that I should delay telling a person intimate problems until I’ve tested the waters with meaningless information to see if they spread rumors or not. Or seeing what they like to read before I trust them with my Jane Austen obsession.

Once I know where I stand, I can move on to manage the situation. I’ve decided, for instance, that the non-profit I’m volunteering for is quite disorganized. I will, then, write proposals for every step of the way and will have them sign. That way, we will all know what to expect. Were they more organized, perhaps I wouldn’t need to be so extreme. But they just are who they are, and I can’t change them. I can just manage my relationship with them.

Spending energy being too happy or too sad about anyone or anything is a waste of energy, I think. Better to live knowing that dealing with both friends and foes is a fact of life. And when foes show up, they need to be managed, not run away from or fought.

Most people probably learn that stuff in kindergarten, or just from their parents growing up. Some of us, though, learn in our 40’s. Better than never.

This past week, I found much comfort on telling myself that life just is. Things just are. People just are. Situations just are. The second I remember that, all the pressure seems to go away, for some reason. Maybe it is that I no longer need to be speculating, trying to predict the future, reach conclusions. I just have to be.