Being Judgemental

Me: “This cake is not sweet”

You: “How do you know?”

Me: “Can’t you just see how it looks?”

Don’t I sound stupid here? We’ll get back to this later…

Being judgemental is defined as ‘having or displaying an overly critical point of view’. The words worth paying attention to, in this definition, are ‘overly’ and ‘critical’. You’re referred to as a judgemental person when you tend to be fault-finding, always searching and finding wrongs in other people. I have been among judgemental people, observed and understood them so in this post I highlight how judgemental people come across and the impression they put on people, something they might not know.

“The face is to a person what the cover is to a book – and we don’t judge a book by its cover”

A judgemental person judges people on face value, name or reputation. He acts as a ‘character’ detector. He is the kind of person who just sees someone’s face and think and talk negatively about them. The kind who ‘can’ tell whether you are ‘morally loose’ just by seeing your face or your dressing. He tends to read faces and know people even without talking to them. He doesn’t care about your story, he doesn’t want to know it, just seeing you or a little conversation is enough for him to evaluate you. Our dear friend here, if you are lucky, will get your story from other people and judge you from that. He doesn’t want to hear your part, understand you or get to know you himself. All he does is censor wrongs and criticise, without fully understanding you and getting to know you himself.

“When you judge others, you do not define them, you define yourself” – Earl Nightingale

So how do we speak of this guy? If we say he is negative, are we wrong? Of course we are not, it’s only right to say so. Judgemental people are negative people. Yes, we all judge others but what differs is the way we do it. If you are going to judge somebody, you ought to use critical thinking and use sound evidence. Be able to back your judgement up. Provide reasons for judging that other person and most importantly, get to understand them first. You don’t just wake up, meet a person once and rate them. There is more to them than meets the eye. Don’t judge a person on face value, name or reputation. The face is to a person what the cover is to book – and we don’t judge a book by its cover; the outside doesn’t always define the inside. You have to get to know them fully and be in their shoes before you pass judgements on them. Unless you’re God, knowing all people’s stories, don’t judge…really, don’t judge.

“You get to know the sweetness of a cake when you taste it, not when you see it”

Now back to the cake issue. Say you like cake, do you get to know the sweetness of it before you taste it? Exactly…no. You get to know the sweetness of a cake when you taste it, not when you see it. What this implies is that you have to get to know why the other person acts the way they do; why they dress the way they do, why they speak the way they do, why they walk the way they do etcetera. Don’t just jump into conclusions. If you just judge people any way you want without understanding or getting to know them first, you come off as a hypercritical person. As said a paragraph ago, judgemental people are negative people. And don’t people prefer to associate themselves with positive people to negative people?

“Even God doesn’t propose to judge a man till his last days, why should you and I?” – Dale Carnegie

As human beings, we feel better when in the presence of positive people and so we tend to get attracted to them. On the other hand, negative people repel us. Take it or leave it, if your life is to be a happy one, you will always need and want other people to break bread with, be it in the work place, at school, at church, at home, etcetera, so you need to be positive and not negative. So stop being judgemental, it’s not fattening.

That’s it, really.

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