“Our judgement is an attempt to negate the source of our discomfort.” Today, in a crowded Thai restaurant, I sat alone and found myself unconsciously highlighting these profound words written by Anodea Judith (2004) in her revised book, Eastern Body Western Mind (a piece I’ve found myself highly captivated by lately). Sitting there dazed, motionless and somewhat wide-eyed, I tried to speculate why I had gravitated towards this quote. In the spirit of trying to make sense of things, I took out my phone, typed in the word “judgement” and this is what I found: “Judgement: noun – the ability to make considered decisions or come to sensible conclusions.” As I continued to read, the example sentence was as follows, “an error of judgement.” A-ha, there it was! “There what was,” you might be wondering. Well, let me walk you through this one since most people don’t really understand how my brain functions – seriously though, I’ve been told that on several occasions. (Some would take this offensively but I take it as a rather big compliment, just like when I’m called weird… talk about being judgemental!) First things first – lets take a look at the word sensible.

In the spirit of feeling rather intellectual I, yet again, looked up this word and under the definition I read, “likely to be of benefit.” This is what made me stop in my tracks. Generally when you think of sensibility you think of logic, reason or maybe even practicality, (another word I could spend hours talking about, but we’ll save that for another time) but back judgement’s definition and trying to vividly comprehend the definition provided by Google. We can conclude that the words in the big white box delicately outlined by faint grey lines is articulating our judgements are made with full common sense and in order to have common sense, you have to be conscious and aware. Now here’s the funny part – why is it that the sample sentence used to define the word contradicts the definition. The sample articulates that there can be inaccuracy in our judgements. Overall, I’d conclude that even as a word, “judgement” is flawed – bringing me back to the initial quote I began with. Judgement isn’t made with logic and sensibility, but rather through the assumptions and personal discomfort we choose to look away from instead of looking within ourselves. I think it’s pretty obvious to see where I’m going with this one – who are we to judge anybody/anything? Rather than spreading our rather illogical, biased and sometimes negative “opinions” why don’t we spend more time looking at what our judgements are trying to tell us about ourselves. Focus on yourselves rather than on the lives of those around you and you might find that what you identify as “weird” is something you simply just don’t understand. For example, and this is rather intimate for a blog, but I used to strongly frown upon girls who spent their time staying with abusive boyfriends whether it be a physical or emotional circumstance. I thought to myself exploitation is exploitation and these girls deserve better. As I spent more time trying to help these girls see the error of their ways, it dawned on me that I was doing exactly what I had been preaching them not to do. I was hypocritical and let my judgements cloud the issue really at hand – I was the girl, I strongly frowned upon. If we spend a little more time trying to understand where these passionate judgements surface from, our lives become a lot less stressful and we gain a certain luminosity about ourselves. Judgements surround society everyday: racism, homosexuality, transgenders, politics, cultures, religions and more. We are so focused on headlining these different “social norms” (though who is to say what the social norm should be) and we bash and formulate harsh judgements – perhaps focusing on your judgements will allow you to understand the underlining message – your insecurities. Throw away your judgements and focus on yourself because everybody deserves to find that radiance and airiness about themselves that judgement steals.