❤ Charged as guilty

Judgmental is not stating an opinion or even labeling something as "good" or "bad". Being judgmental is when, based on one quality of someone or something, you conclude about his whole nature, about all his other qualities. You judge his wholeness based on one aspect.

“We judge others by their behavior. We judge ourselves by our intentions.” If this was a crime, I think i would be charged as guilty... :( I should repeat this saying to myself more often...

Over the past few years I have been trying (and am still trying) to be less judgmental... There have been so many occasions where I let one incident cloud my entire judgment... I am a lot better than how I was... But I guess I still have a long way to go...

Why is it so important to change this, you ask. It wasn't an epiphany... It was more that I was at the receiving end of it once...I remember that horrible feeling of being judged without having a chance to explain... All I wanted to say to everyone at that time was to please hear my side of it before judging me. Why it happened is not so important as what I learned from it... After bearing the brunt of it, I thought I would never judge anyone like I was... But you know what... I was wrong... :(

This gets me thinking..."What is it that makes us feel we are qualified to judge others?" I think the answer is simple.. We do it because its easy... To give everyone a fair chance means you have to open your heart a little bit... It means you have to give everyone enough room for mistakes (I am saying mistakes for a lack of a better word.. though they need not necessarily be mistakes... sometimes its just that we have to give people space to be themselves... we have to give people space to be different) This means you have to give time and you have to overlook a lot of things... So basically.. to avoid being judgmental means a lot of work on your part...

So here is my plan... Every time I express an opinion of someone I should just step back and ask myself these questions... "Is what I am saying right? Do I even know enough to say this? Does this one thing define everything? How would I feel if I was on the other side?" What do you think? This ought to save me from the "judgemental" pitfall, right?

So I guess the theory is grasped... Now I need to perfect the execution... Without exception... Wish me luck...!! :)

P.S. - I wrote this more than 2 years ago. And I am happy to notice that I am a lot better. Even now, I do sometimes fall into the "judgemental" pitfall, I am always on my toes to hop back out again.

❤ Ashwini