How would your life be different if you stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day you look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey. – Steve Maraboli ~ Life, the Truth, and Being Free
As a human, a person with emotions often worn on my sleeve, I find that I don’t like being judged. Who does?
However, in the past week…or more, I have found myself doing the one thing I try not to do. I have found myself judging another person, making assumptions about another human while not having even the slightest clue what makes them the person they are.
Every one of us are born and from that day experience joy, sorrow, love, hate, happiness, anger…the normal range of emotions. However, some of us also get the added struggle of abuse, addiction, soul damaging heartbreak, sickness of the mind or body, or the involuntary participation in watching someone we love fight their own battle, be it mental or physical.
These parts of our personal history form us, can jade us, and sometimes defeat us. At the very least they can catapult us into a darkness that we might manage to climb out of only to find that the person we once were….is gone. Someone else has taken up residence in our soul and no matter how hard we try, that new part of our personality digs in its heels and becomes part of our permanent make-up.
It happens.
If I sit and wonder what is wrong with the world today I would need to look at my small part in it. I sit in judgement of someone, knowing they have not been dealt a perfect hand in their past. This would be the time for me to take a long, hard look at myself and wonder what gives me the right to appraise this person’s individuality.
We all sin differently.
Truth number one: There are no rules that state that just because you play on the same playground you have to like everyone on it. I don’t have to like all the people. And all the people don’t have to like me.
Truth number two: As long as I get up every morning and try my best to do the next right thing and I can put my head on my pillow at night knowing that I did just that, then what other people think of me…well, it’s really none of my business.
I don’t always get it right. Many, many times I get it wrong. It would be easy for someone to look at where I came from and who I used to be and judge me accordingly. Since I don’t live there anymore, that would be wrong. I have managed to leave that person and most of her shortcomings behind. I say most because I am still a very flawed human but have made my peace with it.
Not everyone has found that peace. I need to be more aware of that and show some grace.
That is, after all, the next right thing.
An Honest Sinner 