Judge or Learn

Summary: Never judge, instead, understand and gain information. Then use that information to make the best decision. Judging keeps you busy doing nothing useful while you miss out on critical information right under your nose.

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For a moment, close your eyes. Now, imagine a serial killer breaking into a house, and murdering an old lady inside. He then leaves no trace of his crime and climbs down the emergency stairs. As he rushes down, he notices a kid about to drown, and runs to save him from the river.

“Thank you, sir,” the kid cries back as he tries to hug the man—unaware of the murder this man had just committed.

I know it sounds like an extreme story, but it illustrates a powerful point. Judging is all relative. To the boy, the man is a hero. To the old lady, he’s a killer. So who are we to judge? Just as one man’s trash is another’s treasure; one person’s killer is another person’s savior.

And this nicely leads us to another important point we often ignore. Who are we to judge? Who’s to say your standard is perfectly—or even fairly—calibrated? Good and evil are all relative. To a saint, a law-abiding stripper at a nightclub is evil; but to a serial killer, that same lawful stripper is deemed ‘good.’ Again, who is to say who is good and who is evil? It all depends on the starting point of the observer and the standard at which their values are calibrated.

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Whenever someone does us harm, we are always given two choices: Judge or Learn.

Judging is easy; it takes no accountability, no effort, no understanding. And in the 21st century, we have successfully become professors in judging, yet kindergartners in learning. We’ve normalised dismissing another person as ‘horrible’ just because they don’t share our opinion. We judge others based on what we think is happening, only to then turn into avid collectors of resentment toward their behaviour. Yet, we rarely ask the questions that would open our minds to the truth: Where does that lead us? How does that help? And what does it solve?

But there’s an alternative perspective; a new path for us to tread—only if we’re willing to. If we choose this path of learning, we can begin to look at any situation with new eyes, transforming how we perceive, interpret, and respond to situations.

Appearances can often be deceiving in life. Nothing is truly as it initially seems. Instead of seeing a certain person as ‘horrible’, we may choose to look for the hidden meaning behind their behaviour. We may ask “What does this person’s actions tell me about them? What information can I glean about their current or past emotional states simply from observing their behaviour without judgement?”

Because if we choose to judge them, what do we actually learn? What do we gain?

NOTHING.

But if we override our impulse to judge and instead see the behaviour we’re observing as information, we allow ourselves the chance to use that information to make better, wiser decisions. The problem with judging is that it keeps us busy doing absolutely nothing, all while we miss out on critical information right in front of us—information that could tip the scales in our favour, and vastly transform the outcome.

For example, a friend yells at you, or your partner says something hurtful. You can either choose to judge her as ‘hurtful’ and ‘insensitive’, or you can choose to see her behaviour as just another piece of information that provides you with valuable insights into her internal state, which you can then use to act accordingly. For instance, you’d go from “Agh! She’s being so rude. Can’t she see she’s hurting me?” to “Ok, she seems to be having a bad day. What can I do to support her better?”

In this example, a simple shift in how you perceived someone else’s behaviour, completely changed how you interpreted it; which, in return, transformed your response from one of judgement to one of compassion—from a response that separates, to one that brings you closer together. The lesson here, is that when we let go of our judginess, we open the door for the winds of compassion to flow through our hearts. Because empathy isn’t something we have to find; it’s something we already have within us at all times. All we have to do is remove the barriers that prevent us from acting with that empathy.

So, perhaps, instead of focusing on how ‘rude’ or how ‘hurtful’ or ‘bad’ someone is, we should redirect our attention to what that tells us—to the information it reveals to us about the other person. And if we do this often enough, it will become our mindset. And from then on, whenever something bad is done to us, our default way of handling it will be to follow an information gathering process instead of closing off our minds with senseless judgements.

Because when we approach life with the humble curiosity of a detective, we become seekers of truth, instead of collectors of resentment.