“Woah darling, is that your stomach? Oh dear.”
The thought passed through my mind when a receptionist walked past as I sat patiently in the waiting area. I stared with intensity at the bump that was sticking out from under his shirt that barely covered it. His stomach bounced a little as he walked and I couldn’t help but wonder how the bump got to that extent. The rest of his body was fairly slim. I let out a sigh and then sat back. It took a minute and I shook my head. I was judging him.
Back in the day, I was what we call “judgmental”. Yes, I'll admit it. I didn’t even realize it until certain things I had judged others for, happened to me too. It wasn’t funny then, but now I laugh at myself for trying to cover up my mistakes. And because there was always that annoyingly honest side to me, I couldn’t cover them up for long.
I then resorted to the blame game. I blamed everyone but me. That didn’t last long either. Soon I couldn’t even bare to look myself in the mirror. I let myself down and though I came to an understanding that not all the mistakes were my fault, it was hard to let go because of what I used to do and thus, I was judging myself harder than I did others.
In the Advanced English dictionary, the definition of the word "judge" is “to determine the result or form a critical opinion or form an estimate of something or someone…”
A simple description of a “judgmental” person is someone who classifies people based on observations of which can be true or false, deep or shallow. So, how do we know someone is “judgmental”? Well they need to say something; “Isn’t that skirt too short? "That’s really not appropriate for a Christian." "Isn’t he a little too short for you?" (Courtesy of my mates with interest to my last crush).
As long as you are a human living and breathing (can’t talk for the dead as I’m not there yet) on this earth you can’t not judge. It is human to judge. Proof of that? Well the judiciary court, prison, campaigns, voting and the lists go on. We all try not to, but we are bound to do it sometimes unintentionally. Now you could agree, but then argue that “judgmental” people are on the extreme end compared to everybody else’s judgement but that’s all because they have voiced out their judgements and they are categorized based on continually commenting on what they are seeing or have seen. Thus, we judge them on voicing out their judgement.
Know this, being judgmental isn’t about judging someone, but also something. We need to judge to choose and life is mostly about choosing, if not all? For example, you open a bag with two apples inside it. Before you eat it, you stare at them. One has a clean looking surface and the other has some black spots. Which will you go for? Most likely the clean looking one; you’ve assumed that it is safer to eat. And to arrive at that you needed to judge which one is good to eat.
Another example would be walking down the street and you have no clue whereabouts you are. In sight are a man in casual attire seated by the bench, and a hobo searching through a pile of garbage bags next to said man; whom will you choose to ask for directions? I am 99.9% certain you will be going to the “normal” looking guy for help. You assumed he was the better choice; you judged them both to acquire this outcome.
There are many more examples of daily activities that reveal the fact that we humans are born judges. Now this doesn’t give you the go ahead to be judging back and forth, yapping your mouth to every single thing, but rather to lessen the burdens of those that feel guilty for judging. Once again, we all judge. It is in our nature. We just need to be more responsible about it, as with great power to judge comes a great responsibility to hold thy word every so often.
