The Road Less Traveled

I was mulling over the place where I wanted to start this whole thing. It hit me when I was reading my new chapter for therapy. One of the sentences in there was "Judgement is the royal road to misery." This is so absolutely true. In our society, we have become obsessed with judging people, addicted to it in a way we've never been before. It's like a poison.

The internet has brought us many wonderful things, but it's also added some new and sickening aspects to our society that we've not really had to face before. There are websites (such as People of Walmart) where the whole point is to take pictures of people who do not fit into the norm and make fun of them. There are sites where people do this about fat people, about people who lack the skill to dress themselves 'proper' or spell tattoos. Some people go there every day and laugh, all at the expense of someone else.

I think it's fairly clear how this would affect the people who are the subjects of the pictures, but what we often don't discuss is how it's affecting those who look at them. There is this massive amount of judging going on. A huge lot of feeling superior to people. That kind of emotion can become addictive. It is a state some people like to stay in, and it makes it pretty difficult for them to relate to others.

I am not going to say that being nonjudgmental is easy. It is not. In fact, part of my work for therapy right now is keeping a list of moments when I'm being judgmental and analyzing my emotional state during it. I was shocked at how often I'm doing this. I was also shocked at how much negativity I was building every time I would do it. The two seem to go hand in hand. The more negative things are, the harder it is to expend energy on anything besides just being negative.

So how do we approach a subject from a nonjudgmental perspective? To be honest, I'm not sure. I think maybe recognizing all the moments when this is taking over our lives is the first step. Try it sometime. Just for a day, right down every judgement you make. I think you'd be shocked.