Judgment, redux
My friend, the lovely Goddess, often refers to her blog as a vagina blog. And before you guys go getting all hot and horny, it’s not because she blogs about sex. Okay, maybe sometimes she does… that’s not the point! It’s because it’s pretty much all about thinking like a girl and feeling like a girl. You know, being a girl. Or woman. Pick your gender identifier and move on.
By that definition, this blog will probably be considered to be a vagina blog simply because it’s going to emote in a big fat hemorrhaging sort of way. And we all know that only women do that. *cough* I’m so not touching on the media circus of Hillary “crying” no matter how much I want to. One word: misogynistic bastards. K, that was two. Wevs.
Recently I found myself in a strange position. I had asked someone for help with a situation that was beyond my control. The smarter move on my part would have been to turn around and walk away, but as I was telling someone today, I tend to make monumentally stupid life choices. At any rate, the person I asked for help from eventually asked me for help in return. But, at the same time she asked this, she also made allusions to judging some of the aforementioned monumentally stupid choices.
I’m willing to bet you can guess how that went. I gave her the help she asked for, but I also gave her a heaping dose of Sabre quality snark. As I said to her, far be it from me to deprive anyone of their willingness to critique my choices. And I certainly gave her plenty to judge. And judge she did.
In a conversation last night, it occurred to me how incredibly angry I was about that. Who is she to judge my life or my choices? To judge me based upon experiences that she’s neither shared nor even had to contemplate? Bitch, please. When you’ve lived my life, feel free to judge me. Until then, how about a nice cup of shut the fuck up?
But you know, it got me to thinking. How often do we judge others, not having shared their life experiences, but still feeling somehow qualified to critique their choices?
Have we not all done that? Oh, stop it. Grow up, yes you have.
“Oh my god, I can’t believe he’s going out with her!”
“Why doesn’t she leave him? Is she really that stupid?”
“Did you see how fat her ass is?”
“Wow, he’s a real loser, isn’t he?”
Oh yeah, we’ve -all- done it. I’ve been guilty of a couple of those statements more than once. It seems so easy, doesn’t it? Especially when looking at someone else’s lifestyle choices, or more often than not, their relationship issues.
When a friend asked me what I’d do with a healthy relationship, I had to actually stop and think about how to answer. Having never really had one, I couldn’t say. But the funny thing is, he wasn’t judging me or my choices, he was just asking me to think about how different a healthy relationship might actually be.
He’s pretty good at making me think, which is probably why I don’t call him as often as I should considering how much I value his friendship. I’m just not real happy with that level of verbalization at this point in my life. I’ll think about it, and blog about it, I’m just not ready to really talk about it. Whine and bitch, maybe. But discuss? Yeah, not so much.
What really struck me with the whole conversation was that I truly had no concept of how I would react to such a thing. Because, quite simply, I have absolutely nothing I can base a hypothetical reaction on. Absolutely nothing.
My life has always been an uphill battle. Oh, I’m aware of my societal privilege as a thin, attractive, white woman. That is an entirely separate blog post about privilege, and when I do get around to writing it, it’s going to make you very uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable thinking about it, but I think about it often, because it simply shouldn’t be. But it is. However, even with that certain privilege, I’m still fighting battle after battle trying to find my way in life.
I have had to fight to get to where I am. No one carried me here. I did this, on my own. I fought born-into poverty, I fought abuse, and I fought for the right to at least attempt to be happy. Everything I’ve achieved, and believe me, it isn’t much, has been by my will alone. My tenacious belief that I deserve more than the hand I was dealt at birth. My path isn’t your path, and mine isn’t the same as the girl I saw at the grocery store the other day and rolled my eyes at.
I have well meaning friends who love me and care about me. But some of them are all too happy to judge my choices, and remind me of how stupid I’ve been. But what I think they forget is that my life hasn’t followed the same path as theirs, and my choices were made with the best intentions when they were made.
I’m pretty sure it’s what we all do. We make choices based upon the available data. If the data is flawed, the choice we make is bound to be flawed. There’s no getting around it. Sometimes the data itself isn’t flawed, but the computations are. And there isn’t a one of us who has never made a lousy choice. Period.
Sitting back last night from a position of relative comfort on my back patio and allowing myself to actually be angry at someone judging me was a huge lesson in humility. How many times have I done the same thing? Not knowing what someone else has dealt with, been through, but still making that snap judgment on how screwed up I think they are.
You never know where someone else is coming from. Maybe instead of saying, “I’d never do that!” what we should be saying is, “Thankfully, I’ve never had to make that choice.”
You’ve never lived my life, nor I yours (the collective you, this isn’t addressed to any one person.) And as I haven’t lived yours, I’ll reserve my judgment and quietly sip on my nice, tall cup of shut the fuck up.
I’d appreciate the same in return.