What Judging Others Teaches Us About Ourselves

A Trained Reaction

I used to pride myself on being someone who could evaluate people and situations correctly. Once I made an assessment of how someone was, that was it – they were what they were according to my point of view. I was the judge, the jury, and the expert. I used to think that if I said it, it must be true. I considered myself a reasonable and intelligent person. How silly that all sounds to me today. Back in the day, I never questioned my judgments. I thought this is what people did. But, with experience and an awakening, I realized nothing could be further from the truth. I came to see that my judgments of others had nothing to do with them and everything to do with me.

We are raised in a world where we are taught to judge each other for what we perceive as shortcomings. That’s because we are taught to judge ourselves for the same reason. But, we have been tricked. That any one of us has shortcomings is nothing but a lie. No one does. It doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t look like you, if they don’t pray like you, if they don’t act like you, or if they don’t love like you- there is nothing wrong with them just as there is nothing wrong with you. We all want to live the way we think is best, but the idea of how to do that and what that looks like applies to only one person – you.

It takes a lot of energy to judge and hate. What if we took the energy we use to judge others and ourselves as “not good enough” and used it, instead, to practice self-acceptance and acceptance of others? What would happen then? I believe we would have the opportunity and the energy to experience life in a more joyful, more connecting way. We would quickly begin experiencing life as it truly is. That just sounds nice, doesn’t it!