Tag: #stopjudging

Hold my coffee because I need to jump up onto my soapbox to rant for a minute. 😑

Well, maybe more than a minute, because this is an encompassing subject that affects every single aspect of who we are and the world around us.

I’m referring to judgment and limiting beliefs systems – and how damaging it is to us as individuals, and society at large. It stunts out growth and limits our possibility.

Saturday, I went to a local casino with friends. I’m not really a gambler and rarely go to casinos. The energy makes me feel sad. But a few of my friends go somewhat regularly, and I thought it might be a good opportunity for me to see the experience from a different perspective. The first little bit was fun, although we all lost money. Half an hour in or so, some other friends joined us.

They had been there less than 10 minutes, had not been drinking and hadn’t had a chance to get a drink yet, but one of these friends  has a very boisterous personality.   The floor manager, along with a couple of the security came over to ask her to leave. 

They thought she was drunk and told her that she could not order any more drinks or gamble. Needless to say, I was shocked and confused. She hadn’t had a drink yet, so how could she be cut off from ordering more? 

I was sitting right next to her at a line of slot games to watch her technique, and although she didn’t behave like most of the other people in the casino, who seemed to me a little bit like depressed zombies as they lost their financial security to slot machines or tables rigged for the house to win, she was not in any way being unruly or extreme in her behavior. 

But her personality apparently did not fit into the accepted order, so she was kicked out. 

It’s interesting how things are brought to us in multiples, isn’t it?

The very next morning, one of my very good friends called me in tears because something similar happened to her at church.  

Apparently, she was too enthusiastic in her worship of God during the music and when the pastor would say “Can I get an Amen?”.  

As she was leaving, two men took her side to tell her that while they appreciated her spirit, could she please take her joy and enthusiasm down from a 10 to 5 or six?  Because “God“ likes us to be quiet and obedient, right?

We humans really love to put things in boxes; tiny little hidey – holes where we need things to fit in order to feel safe in the world around us.  

We put the idea of “God“ in a box that looks just enough like us in to feel safe, but enough different to feel like something we can rely on.

We judge each other and ourselves by our skin color, sex, personality, career choices, how much money we make, by the homes that we live in, our social status, age, looks, diet, exercise regimen, and 100 other things in this quest to create familiarity with every aspect of our existence. Because that which we don’t know or understand is often frightening.

But what is the old expression?   “Familiarity breeds contempt”

Or how about “When you label me, you negate me.”

We take the mystery and magic out of those people and things around us; we label, judge, and make smaller everything and everyone; ourselves included, and then we wonder why we have a habit of feeling deeply unhappy.  

We wonder why the rate of depression in the United States is estimated to be hovering around 46%, yet continue to hold to societal norms that were relevant or to our primitive ancestors in a time when a certain amount of assimilation was necessary for the safety and continuation of our species.

 I believe we are seeing such a tremendous uptick in neural divergence because we are living in a time when we are meant to evolve beyond our past limited ways of thinking.  We are meant to evolve beyond the fear that keeps us bound and shackled to a system that hasn’t worked well for a long time.  

Honestly, sometimes it is enough to make me weep – or pull my hair out. Or a combination of the two.

This frustration stems from the understanding that when we make small the world around us, we shrink proportionally. When we judge others, we also judge ourselves as lacking in some way.  We judge out of fear, out of lack, out of hatred.  There is no room for love in judgement. 

When  it comes right down to it, we are each living in a microcosm of our own making. 

We can only see reality based upon our minds’  acceptance of what is real and what is not. What is acceptable and what is not.   What our past experience and neurological programming deems appropriate.  This is why critical, judging, and destructive behaviors are often passed from generation to generation. 

Our programming begins with our parents or caregivers in childhood and continues throughout our lives, but the Reticular Activating System; the mind’s sensory filtration system, located in  a part of the “primitive brain” called the amygdala, will only allow us to “see” that which is acceptable or appropriate; largely based upon our past experience and preconceived ideas and notions.

 If our parents and those around us told us that the Earth was flat, well, of course, the earth must be flat and anybody that believes otherwise must be crazy.

But then, at some point, we learn that the Earth is in fact, round – and it is those that believe it is flat  that are crazy.

Do you see my point here? Truth is subjective and relative only to what we have created in our minds.

• “Of course, there are different truths on different levels. Things are true relative to other things; “long” and “short” relate to each other, “high” and “low,” and so on. But is there any absolute truth? Something self-sufficient, independently true in itself? I don’t think so.
• Dalai Lama

Let me make this a little bit personal with some examples from my own life.   

For those that know me, I look younger than what society says I should based upon how many trips around the sun I have had. I believe a large portion of this is because I do not agree or subscribe to whatever it is that “age” is supposed to be.

This has been true for my entire adult life.

 It was rare that older  “adults” who didn’t know me saw my value as a human being because of the way I looked.  Instead, they saw a “pretty young thing“ who was fun to look at, but the idea of me being intelligent and intuitive was not in the realm of possibility.

A poignant illustration of this was a night when I was at a party with my then fiancé’s parents, his brother and sister, and their spouses. 

I was 20 at the time.  My fiancées brother’s wife was in her early 30s and had recently gotten her doctorate. When a group of family friends approached us, I was introduced as the “sweet, beautiful“ daughter and Layla was introduced as the “smart” daughter.  Never mind that Layla was quite pretty, and I am quite intelligent; the Who that we were was instantly not only degraded, but negated to everyone in that group.  

Even now, I find myself judged as a result of my appearance.  In a group of people older than me I am the “baby”, but to those  in their 20s and 30s, I am a peer –  until my wisdom and experience  gives me away, and then I become the “mother“ or the “MILF” instead of just another soul enjoying a human experience of fun and connection.  

I become the flat earth, because of what they have been taught and continue to believe.

For much of my young adulthood, I exclusively had relationships with men significantly older.  

Then I met my ex husband, who was nearly eight years younger.  My past programming said “no effing way” to anything beyond friendship, but when, a month or so into spending time together, I realized that I quite enjoyed him as a person with a beautiful soul, I questioned my own doctrine.  I didn’t “see” the age difference in a man twenty years my senior, so why did I judge someone who was younger?

Because of the way I judged myself.  

This realization allowed me to open to the possibility of more, and friendship led to dating and eventual marriage.  We stayed together for 15 years, and I don’t think it ever occurred to either of us to think about the difference in our age.  Most people assumed I was younger than him.  

I, like most of us, have experienced the way people judge in every possible form. I have been stopped on the road by a police officer when I was out walking with a good friend, who happened to be an African-American male. The Officer wanted to make sure I was “safe“.  Because I was a white female out walking with a black man.  Wtf?

One of my best friends happens to be gay. I have known him since childhood, and knew he was gay before he did.  In my mind, it was no different than the fact that he has a mole on his left cheekbone or the way his heart feels, but society says that instead of being a perfect and beautiful soul, he is a “sinner”.  He’s bad.  Wrong. 

 F#ck that shite.  How dare any of us judge what makes someone else happy?  

I know that every single person reading this can relate in some way, whether it is feeling judged because of your career choices, your race, your looks, your age, your gender, your sexual preference or any of the other physical, emotional, or intellectual aspects of who you are as a person. 

 We judge who we will connect with based upon race, religion, age, sexual identity or a hundred other petty assumptions based upon personal “truths” that are not only subjective but likely completely untrue, but we limit the degree to which we live our lives as a result.  

So let’s just agree to stop.  Stop judging each other.  Stop judging ourselves.  Recognize that we are all souls having this very individual human experience, yet also connected.  And that is a beautiful thing.  

Much love and big hugs, always. 

• Terah💖