By Swarnabha Saha:
I always dared, during my school days, to be seen with a girl, whoever she may be, in the streets of our town. Our town was a small one with a radius of few kilometers, where most people knew most others. I often heard the parents of my friends discussing seeing someone with someone and what may be going on between them. The fear was not because I was too shy, little bit for sure, but not abject. The main issue was, I feared about people judging me, speculating various thoughts about me running after or along with the girl, when we may share just a good friendship or even less. Actually the perception of our society is tinted with being judgmental.
According to Dr. Gregg Henriques,“Someone is being judgmental when their judgments are power-driven, unempathetic, based on their own idiosyncratic values or tastes, overly based on other people’s character, and are closed, shallow, and pessimistic, and ultimately have the consequence of making the other person feel problematically diminished.”
Proclivity towards judging others come from various reasons:
1. When you can’t withstand the exact articulation or gesture or behavior within yourself: In most of the cases this is the main stimulus that provokes someone in judging others. Maybe the person whom you are judging may derive the same conclusion about you.
2. When you envy someone’s success and resent your lacuna in that aspect. This type of stimulus generates when you can’t accept the fact that someone has attained some recognition and you try to find faults in them.
3. When you think you are better than anyone else and none can meet your standards. Bossy people often get affected by this stimulus. When you have a mindset that there is no one better than you, you start judging others superficially.
Well, then what can be the remedies to restrain oneself from judging others? Clearly we don’t have pills yet, but a few procedures can be followed:
1. Evaluate the circumstances before you start judging the effect.
2. Evaluate the potential impact of your judgment and the outcomes that your relation with that person is going to face.
3. Evaluate the grounds on which the person did that activity or gesture.
4. Evaluate the psychological background of the person concerned.
5. Evaluate the time-frame, when it was done.
6. Evaluate the maturity of the person concerned.
7. Evaluate yourself whether you are in a state of judging others or not.
Judging is such a well-ingrained response that we hardly notice when we are doing it. When we open the windows of our intellect and address ourselves to reasoning, it makes us easy enough to dodge the bullet of being judgmental. When you explore beliefs and assumptions instead of judging people, you open a door to expanded self-awareness and self-acceptance. This paves the way for a better co-ordination, co-operation and thus forming a better, healthier society for the next generation to reveal all their colours without the fear of being judged.