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.

Like Ridding a Bike?

I don’t know how to ride a bike. As a child, I never had any toys, let alone a bike. My job was to wonder around the house looking at the employees (a bakery), or out a window, and not talking to anyone. I went through a helping period when I was about five. The ladies would give me cookie dough, so I could make shapes and keep busy.

My brothers learned to ride because they used bikes to deliver pastries to nearby corner stores. But my sisters and I weren’t allowed alone out the door, for we lived close to the red light district. The “little girls,” as everyone called us all the way to our early 20’s, were closely guarded until we were about 15.

Once in Canada, I tried to learn, on my nephews’ bikes, but I couldn’t. Now that I’m married, my husband and I have entertained several solutions: (1) buying a child size bike so I won’t fall, (2) Getting a 3-wheeler low rider, (3) putting training wheels on a bike, so I can learn like children do.

I am too cheap to spend money on a child-size one. I know that, once I learn, I won’t need it anymore. I don’t like the low riders because I would be “down there” while my husband rides a normal height bike—it wouldn’t be fun. The training wheels always sounded embarrassing. I just couldn’t stomach the thought that everybody would see me riding around with training wheels, like a child. Since I rejected all my options, the project has been on hold for several years now.

Yesterday, though, I discovered a 4th solution, while watching a video of one of my favourite mysteries—Midsomer Murders—I saw a lady ridding a 3-wheeled bike especially made for adults. I fell in love with the bike. The back is so wide that easily holds a basket to even use it for grocery shopping.

Then I found out the price. It costs about $500. Ouch! Then I remembered my option #3, the training wheels, and thought, “If ridding around on an old lady’s bike isn’t embarrassing, why would it be embarrassing to ride with training wheels?”

It occurred to me that all the work I’ve been doing on disregarding other people’s opinions on whatever I do is paying off. For some reason, all of a sudden, I don’t care what others say about my ridding any kind of bike I may choose. I even think I could amuse myself with their looks.

But something more interesting yet will happen, I’m sure. Other ladies who never did learn to ride a bike as children will be encouraged to try my method. Every time I do something daring and strange, it seems, someone else is encouraged to copy me.

I still don’t know when I will implement my plan—next summer, perhaps. It isn’t too appealing out there for a bike ride right now. But it will happen. I promise.

My reaction to Michael Jackson's death

For the first few days, I thought the fans and the media were going overboard. That it was crazy what they were doing. Well, it was, but that isn't the point I want to make.

My point:  why is it that I felt nothing?

Truth be told, the man clearly had no impact in my life: not positive nor negative. I like a couple of his songs: The dancing machine & Ben, but that's it. Spanish singers never heard-of in North America make me weep for a second when they die, but not Michael Jackson.

It took me three or four days to understand that the fans were hurting because they loved him, because his music did something for them, because good or evil, the man had an impact in their lives. And that the media was just giving the public what they wanted.

Two aspects of my ailing mental health came into play: (1) my attachment disorder, and (2) my inability to tolerate fault in myself or others. The two are quite possibly interrelated.

I am attachment disordered. Because I never did experience a loving relationship with my mother or my siblings, I rarely become attached to anyone to the point of crying when they leave or die. If you piss me off, I'll just forget about you and move on. And while that is good for handling abusive situations, it is really bad in the sense that I might as well be a robot, going through life doing staff factually and keeping my feelings at bay.

The worst part of being that way is that I suspect I do hurt when I leave people or they leave me. It is just that the pain is so buried inside that I can't feel it. I experience it, perhaps, as self-hatred or as a generalized feeling of "I don't like anyone -- no one likes me -- why the hell do I have to live in such a hostile world -- might as well just put myself out of my misery."

So, in a way, I wish I were like Michael Jackson's fans. At least they can experience and express their feelings. They aren't like me, this Terminator-like person who can end any relationship and keep going as if nothing happened.

The other problem is the inability to accept human shortcomings.

It goes like this: I meet a person and like them for a while, but the moment they do something I strongly disagree with, disapprove of, or just dislike, I drop them and move on.

Michael Jackson did many things that can make me drop a person from my fav list: heavy emphasis on physical appearance, a weird way of speaking, rejection of his own race by trying to become white, outrageous attire, child molestation rumors, buying kids so he could have children, living beyond his means, using drugs, etc, etc.

He just wasn't my kind of pal, was he?

But, does it follow that I would have to close my ears and stop appreciating his good music or my eyes and stop enjoying his dancing? Does it follow?

Why can't I appreciate a person with short comings and all? Wouldn't it be nice if I could look at what's positive in a person and see their faults as water under the bridge?

Of course I know where such bad habit comes from: you guessed it, my mother. 

We could clean the house spotless and instead of saying, "Great job, girls. I'm so thankful you took time to clean the house." She would say, "You forgot to sweep under the sofa," and walk away dismissively. 

As you can imagine, siblings and I followed suit. If a brother or sister came to me bragging of a romantic conquest or a good job at whatever, I would say something like, "Does she know that your grades aren't very good?"

If I came home happy I got an A at school, someone had to say, "Too bad you're so ugly."

If just seemed like, in my household, anything short of absolutely perfect was abominable. Of course nowadays, I not only reject other people, I mainly reject myself.

For instance, the only thing I dislike about traveling is that when Husband and I go shopping,  I see us on store windows. He looks really good, if you ask me. But I see an out-of-shape, short woman with fat arms on the glass and wonder why the heck he stays with me.  It just seems that, in my mind, men only love skinny, curvy, tall, pretty women. A little voice tells me that Husband settled for me. "He was too shy to ask anyone else out and you were easy for him."

 

As a Christian, many a time I prayed God would help me accept fault in others and in myself. But my prayer was never answered. Also, I've been in therapy for countless years, yet I still seem to keep my no-fault policy to relationships, and I hate it.

I wish there were a potion I could take at night that would make me wake up accepting of others' and of my own mistakes and shortcomings.

As it turns out, Michael Jackson finally did have an impact on me, with his death. Perhaps one way or another, his notoriety which led to the profound pain he had to appease with prescription drugs did help many people.  He did, apparently, give those of his race new heights to aspire to and an ambassador in a mostly white performance world. 

Maybe he will help me see that being less than perfect is a fact of life and that having faults is 100% better than seeking perfection. Cross your fingers.