The Human Construct of Judgment

Judgment is a funny thing. It’s one sided. Judgment is a reflection of a person’s personal and inner narrative, but not always their moral compass, assuming of course their moral compass is pointing to good.

As human beings, constructed of the weaknesses that comprise us all, we cannot help but judge each other. If one is religious then yes, the Bible states that judgment is God’s and we should not engage in it, but we all do.

“Look how fat she is,” is just one example.

The judgment too can be directed both outward as well as inward. We all tend to have very negative inner dialogs, much of which is destructive to us as individuals. The why and what for isn’t something I’m educated enough to get into either. I just know this is the human condition.

Everyone has insecurities.

Everyone has weaknesses.

That’s called being human.

When judgment is evil is when we take that judgment and share it with others as though it is fact. Each of us, sitting in our own self constructed ivory towers, lobs judgment out to all who fit the needs of the judgment narrative, and most of us aren’t afraid to share that judgment with others.

I’m not saying I’ve not done this too. I’m guilty of this sin as well. I recognize and own that.

What the last season of my life has taught me is how wrong I was. The lesson was harsh and brutal too, because those who judged me stripped me of all that I am, all that I believed myself to be, and left nothing but a broken empty shell.

The funny thing about being an empty shell is that if you have the strength to seek healing and stand back up again you have to evaluate that empty shell and figure out where to go from there. What I learned was my shell wasn’t empty after all. While there were those who tried to strip me of all that I was, in healing I realized I wasn’t the things I was accused of being, quite the contrary, I was those things entirely. What the judgment hadn’t allowed me to be was human.

Can one be human, which means flawed, and still be kind, still be a good person?

Yes. Yes, one can.

The truth is I am kind. I am a good human being. I genuinely care for others.

Because someone judged me as cruel and unkind doesn’t make it so.

I did mistreat one person. I have repeatedly owned it, I have repeatedly apologized for it, and frankly I’m over the self flagellation that was demanded of me to be penitent, especially when the expectation of that penitence is that it be lifelong. I am expected to sit in a corner and with as much shame as I can muster, remind everyone that I was unkind. If I had it to do over again I wouldn’t be unkind, but in the end here is the thing – my crucification didn’t fit my crime. A collective group of people unilaterally walked away from me and NOT ONE OF THEM asked me my side of the story. Not one, and that’s ok. Well, one person did but she didn’t really care what my side of the story was, and that’s ok too.

The group that walked away was a group I didn’t fit in with anyway because I’m not into the sorority chick self-congratulatory thing anyway. I am also not going to pretend that the situation in schools is all unicorns and rainbows. The truth is hard and ugly and some people can’t face that, which is fine. I’ve never drug anyone by the neck to the river and forced them to drink. I’ve always said and I will continue to exclaim that I don’t walk in your shoes and by all means you do you.

I know, I’m mixing my metaphors. I’ll stop.

Anyway, the point is I allowed others’ judgment of me to redefine who I was inside my own head. I’ve always expressed the need to be kind but now people laugh out loud and exclaim to anyone who will listen that I have no right to talk about kindness. That was the piece I struggled with the most. By mistreating someone was I in fact not at all kind on any level, ever, to anyone or anything?

No, that’s not so.

In the human construct of what judgment it is important to recognize that it is human made. We in fact do not have the right to judge one another. We won’t stop because we are all flawed, but it is something we can endeavor to improve upon as individuals. That in and of itself is not impossible. It will be a lifetime effort to be sure, but it’s not an impossible thing to strive towards.

It took a long time to shed the judgment others placed on me. Even today someone jumped out of left field determined to remind me that, in their (rather mistaken) judgment, I am a terrible person, and that’s ok. That’s their issue, not mine. It took me a few hours to come full circle to that thought, and here’s why. While it didn’t hurt my feelings, it did make me angry, but it only made me angry because I had put this individual in my past, but they couldn’t afford me the dignity of remaining in my past; instead they choose to leap out of the shadows of my past and taunt me with their judgment of me. They sought to tell me once more that I’m a bad person, cruel, and unkind, but their actions speak far more loudly about their own internal struggles than it does of my own. While it took me a couple of hours to calm down, I did calm down and moved on. They’ll do it again too, I’m sure of that, but now I recognize the attempt to continue to fling judgment my way, and doubly recognize that this is the human construct of judgment, and nothing else.

Despite how others may attempt to define who and what I am, I know my truth, and I’m good with who I am as a person, a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a friend. In other words, I am me, and I’m really good with that.