Judgment Jaunt

i judge people
people I don’t know
i try not to do this
i know that it’s unfair
i try and recognize this impulse in myself
to look within and find where these judgements are coming from
and perhaps choose another path
another perspective
i’m told that looking within is the best thing to do
the wise way to be
that a wise person responds to difference in others, with curiosity instead of fear
but that’s not easy
and after all, it’s natural to make judgements about that which is different
the unknown
to be suspicious and even fearful of the foreign
it is logical to be discerning
necessary even
one needs good judgement to navigate this complex, diverse and often dangerous world
if i don’t know the people around me
then i have no idea what they might do
so i must observe them
and i must judge them
so why do i also tend to judge the people that i DO know
even people that i care about
and why does it seem that the more i learn about these people
these people i claim to care about
the more judgements i seem to have developed about them
i guess that’s because my judgements are not really about what i don’t know
or even about what i know
my judgements are actually about what i THINK i know
i think i know them to be worth caring about
because i have such good judgement
and so i now realize that this is also what is happening when i judge people that i don’t know at all
i’m making judgements based entirely on what i can see about them in the moment
how they look
how they behave
what i can hear of what they say
i make these observations and then i judge them
and i tell myself that this is ok
i tell myself that this is necessary
after all, it’s a cold and cruel world out there
and i must protect myself from these unknown things
these things
that’s the thing, isn’t it?
what i’m doing with my judgements
is turning people into things
things are so much easier to deal with than people
i can take a thing apart and analyze every individual particle of its being
i can really know what it is
i can know it so well that i will be able to predict how it will behave in any given situation and under any given set of conditions
i can judge things
and determine whether or not they are good
good and safe
worthy of trust
as one would trust a good machine
a carefully examined object
judged to be safe
but
the thing is
this trust that comes from judgement WILL change
the moment the thing breaks
the moment it begins to behave in unpredictable, unacceptable ways
the thing becomes untrustworthy
it becomes a BAD thing
i judge people
a bad thing
i judge people
a bad thing
i judge people