Judging with judgment

Not all sanity is sane

Hand-crafted:

Robert De Niro is driving the car, with the CEO of his company in the backseat. He is observant, alert to what’s happening with the lady inside the vehicle. Based on first impressions, the lady mistakes him to be nosy and is skeptical of his intentions. But the senior is aware of what he is doing: he is looking out for his boss, he knows that he can be of help to her. She finally understands his good nature and motives, becomes his close friend and the plot of The Intern ends on a happy note.

That’s a good movie; “movie” being the keyword. Beginnings and endings are crafted by directors and screenwriters to make the audience feel good about what they are watching. Real-life scenarios aren’t that simple. We can’t write our lives, we can’t predict how we are going to be treated by people.

Reality:

We are constantly being judged by others in every way. Whether it’s a new workout place, a recent job, a new social media profile or an old one, there are people out there having preconceived notions about us. They are judging us for how we look, what we wear, what we say, how we sit or how we talk. We can’t totally blame people for that because we believe that having judgments helps us in making better decisions.

This is the reason why there are thousands of videos and books online on how to make good first impressions, how to be the friendliest or coolest person in the room and many such things to impress or persuade other people.

We are extremely conscious of how we portray ourselves on social media with the content we share. We take our time, craft every word, every pixel to form a planned, directed opinion in the minds of others. It’s almost like the movie inception, except we don’t implant opinions in dreams but in reality. This makes us self-obsessed; disregard our inner child that wants to stay true to who we really are and appreciate people for what they really are.

Judgment:

We judge people because we are easily triggered by our past. Our brains constantly try to ease us by giving feedback from our precedented past. That’s why it happens that colleagues from our new workplace presume we are intriguing/uninteresting/dumb/geniuses from the get-go.

We have built an inner world within us with what we have found outside. The threats, praises, love, and hatred that we found in our surroundings has merged into our way of thinking. Many times, this inner world is full of thoughts that are not of our better nature. We assume we can be kind and compassionate only with worldly success or competence. We show friendliness with people of power. Although we have it in us to see beyond what this inner world shows us, it’s just hidden from our sight.

Treatment:

Analysing the present with the facts that we have in front us is dispassionate, boring and time-consuming. So why would we do that when our brains already have an answer to all of our probes? Because it’s important to remember that we are not totally sane all the time.

“If we were totally sane, we would respond to the present only on its own terms; we would worry or be angered or give way to anxiety only as much as the circumstances before us actually dictated. But we are not — of course — most of us quite sane, as evidenced by the way that we respond with such disproportion to certain events in the here and now. We have occasional tendencies to get wildly more worried, angry and anxious than we should, if we were simply following the facts in front of us.” — The School of Life

Let’s learn to mute the unhelpful voices. Let’s allow people to be ridiculously and deeply honest as they are. Let’s analyse people for how they have developed, matured and grown over time. All of us can learn to be that, to be better at understanding ourselves and others. Only if we can remind ourselves that sanity coexists with insanity in us all.

Have a great week! Much love. ❤