We live in a world of examinations and tests. We’re constantly being asked to judge everything, everything that exists around us.
So it is really difficult to develop the concept of being non-judgmental for allowing whatever happens to ultimately happen.
But I think it would be interesting to try it for a day in a way, because we all know, if we have any association with people, that we can change no one. The only person I can truly change is, of course, me. I can change me.
So if I claim that I hold myself up to a higher standard, then I have to do that, don’t I? And just maybe, if this is somewhat true and I do have a standard, then other people will watch me, and they will perhaps try to emulate me.
But there are no guarantees that that’s true at all. And when we look at people, I think many times we unfortunately do judge, but we should not judge if at all possible, because we don’t really know what goes on inside another person’s brain, do we?
I can touch you, I can feel the warmth of your body, as I often like to say, but I have really no idea what’s going on inside you, your frustrations, your anxieties, your fears.
And I think probably if we judged less and encouraged more, we would certainly be a lot further along the path.
Small story, I teach a lot of people, and many times I’ll ask for an opinion, and I will hear an opinion, and people often make grammatical or pronunciational mistakes in English, and I never correct people, never. Not once. Why not?
Because I think you will correct yourself over time.
Certainly if there’s a class of people, they will hear other people saying certain terms or using certain grammar in the correct way, and they will reference that, and that will change their way of speaking or their perception of how to act in a
given conversation, and they quickly learn to teach themselves. So if you begin a class, what did you do last week? I go, I go, I go. Many people will say, and then someone will say, I went to, and then, aha!
We’re supposed to say, I went to Taipei, for instance. I didn’t go to Taipei last weekend. So people are very clever this way.
They are self-correcting. So if we aspire to not be judgmental, then people have the opportunity to really put their best foot forward. Now, of course, there are circumstances that people intentionally do evil and wrong things.
You know, the one that really kind of troubles me is the telephone scam. My mother was subject to this.
A man phoning her up, trying to get a donation, and eventually out of this poor old woman, he was able to pull thousands of dollars, and it was just fortunate that one of my brothers stopped it. And there was no religion involved with these people.
It was just a story that they made up, so they could trick elderly people. And I don’t get people who do this. I really don’t, because I understand stealing.
I understand robbery, go into a bank with a gun, but these are really weak, helpless, old people for the most part, and they’re exploited by thousands of individuals. I mean, it is a business in a certain sense of the word.
So I think it’s really painful. There’s gotta be horrible karma coming their way. There’s no question.
So in that sense, I think we do have to sometimes judge moral behavior, don’t we? Because otherwise we would allow all behaviors to occur.
And this is not correct, because there are things that are just not allowed, and we do judge in a society, of course. But other than that, we cannot be ongoing and judging people on trivial things.
The way you look, the color of your hair, the pattern of your speech, these are very much individual things, and ultimately we must decide for ourselves. So if we aspire to not judge, then perhaps we can actually listen to the goodness of people.
Now, certainly there are people that are below your station in life. They might be poor, they might not have the education, but even so, they have things to say, right?
But if we say to ourselves that these people are worthless, there’s nothing I can receive from them, then that bit of something special, if you will, will never be told. Never, because they will be too afraid.
And this is part of the problem to digress for a moment with education in general, is that many times in a classroom of 30 children, the teachers, of course, want to deal with the top kids, the top echelon, because they’re the ones that produce the
best and they’re the least problematic. But at the bottom, they cause the most problems and they don’t give anything back to the overall status of the class, if the educational system is orientated in that way. And it is in North America.
This is not true, I’ve read, in Finland, in Finland, the teachers spend very little time on the excellent students and the majority of time on the students that are struggling.
And this is why there’s a higher standard of education in general in Finland. And this is why perhaps Finland continues to be one of the top ranked countries for happiness in the world.
So I guess we should say to ourselves to be a little bit like the archetype of Jesus. Don’t judge too easily and when we have to judge, at least have some logic behind it.
And then, just then, the world will slowly but surely become a better place because gosh, we’ve judged a lot. We’ve judged other countries. We’ve judged other races.
And the net result has not been positive for sure. So try not to judge. Try to listen more, judge less.
And you know what they say. You know what they say. Critical thinking is everything, especially when it teaches us not to judge and be so judgmental.
And critical thinking is great, truly great. You take care. God bless. Bye-bye.