The judgemental beings

 

It is human to judge. Forming opinions, having prejudices, making decisions without taking into consideration the whole of the factual matrix; secretly or overtly, we all do it. Being judged is something that many of us despise the most. On the contrary, judging others is something we secretly love to do. So how is it fair when we judge others and unjust when others judge us? When we complain about others being too judgemental, aren’t we unaware of the fact that, those others and us, we all possesses within, the same human behavioral pattern? Whether we accept it or not, by default we all do judge.

But when we judge, all we take into account are the obscure outer details. Maybe due to lack of time or patience, we fail to go deeper into the facts and look at the bigger picture. And what do we end up doing ? We arrive at hasty decisions and senseless conclusions. 

When a person is judged by their deeds, we neglect to look at the circumstances which drove them, or their backstories which shaped them. A person is not what he or she does. But when we judge, we become blinded to the fact that the doer and the act done are two different facets of the same coin. 

A lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings get fed into our minds when we become too judgemental which slowly leads to both inner and outer conflicts. We judge people by the colour of their skin, their appearance, the family they come from, the race they are born in, the caste they belong to, the religion they follow, the dress they wear and every minute unimportant things. We rush into opinions and conclusions about them. And what purpose does this serve? Feeding our superiority complex? Making us feel better than others? Self satisfaction? 

If someone spends money, wears branded clothes, buys expensive gadgets, he is a spendthrift. If someone, despite of the wealth he has, chooses a minimalistic living, he is a miser. If one has a lot of affection for the poor and suffering and makes a lot of charity, then he is a show off. But if someone likes to keep to himself and stays away from all this, he is unsocial and unkind. We have labels for everyone. We never accept that people are often beyond our stereotypes.

It is easy to close our minds on others. Everyone does it. What is difficult is to understand that there must be a reason behind everything. We are all walking imperfections. We all have flawed, erred and sinned. We all have our own struggles and challenges. We all play characters of our own stories and it is important to understand that everyone has a story of their own. And a story is to be read in entirety, a few paras cannot even give you the essence of it.