Judgment

Today I caught myself making a judgment. That is not something I like to admit. It is not a good color on me. Or anyone.

Today I overheard someone talking about how they went to a local establishment, and would be patronizing this establishment during the holidays. I thought to myself about what that person had said. “Why would he do that? Doesn’t he know that that establishment’s corporate policies are homophobic? How could he patronize that establishment?” That’s when I caught myself making a judgment.

I’m not a racist, I’m not homophobic. I don’t judge anyone on their size, skin color, sexual orientation, political alignments, religion or lack thereof. But, naturally, there are some things that happen in the world that I don’t agree with. When I heard that person make that statement, it didn’t make them immoral, I just didn’t happen to agree with his choice of patronizing that establishment.

So yes, I judged someone. I’m not proud of  it. Does that make me an awful person? No. It makes me human. We are human beings and we judge. Like it or not, we judge. We judge one another all the time:

“Look at her eat. She is so fat.” “That hairstyle is so gay.” “That was so retarded.” “They need to learn to speak English.” “She is so thin. I bet she goes home and throws up her dinner.”  

We make judgments on how people are dressed, people’s hairstyle, their behavior, any number of things. Sadly, more often than that, we turn these judgments inward, on ourselves.

Our judgments do not serve any purpose. Now that I am aware of it, I realize that I have work to do on banishing all judgments. Just like the rest of us. After all, everyone matters.

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