On the first day when I landed in the US, my host mother taught me something that I’ve been trying to live up to through all my years in the States. On my very first night, at the dinner table, out of no where, my host mom, a Chinese lady who’ve lived in the US for more than 20 years, said to me:” The first thing I want to tell you is also the most important thing I’ve learned through my experiences here: don’t judge. I’m not going to explain to you why, but I want you to really remember this, and try your best to follow it.” Being on this strange continent for just a few hours and super jetlagged, I simply nodded and didn’t think too much about it. It was not until later, did I truly comprehend the message she wanted to give me.
Of course, being a new foreign student in the jungle that high school is, it didn’t take long before judging and being judged became an important part of my life.
The first day of school, a girl in my history class invited me to join her little lunch group, when I sat down in the cafeteria with four other girls and heard them feeding me information about almost everyone in the entire junior class, I couldn’t help secretly labeling every single one of them in my head. However, within one month, all my secret labels were proved wrong. The frank white girl who I thought was a rustic is actually from a very wealthy and well-educated family; my classmate who I thought was the leader of the group was actually the shyest of them all; and the Mexican girl who I thought was a sweet little daddy’s girl, dropped out of school two weeks later because she found herself pregnant.
All the girls at lunch were talking about it, after I got home. I couldn’t help sharing the 16-year-old pregnant girl’s story with my host mom. “ I can’t believe this.” “ This is so wrong.” “She should not be dropping out of school at such a young age.” “Is she even capable for raising a baby?” “How can her parents just accept that?” “Why don’t she get an abortion?” “ Oh my god I can’t believe I thought we could become good friends!” I flooded my host mom with questions and exclamation marks.
However, she took it surprisingly calm:“ What did I tell you on our first dinner? Don’t judge. Just because she is a pregnant teen doesn’t necessarily make her a bad person. There are so many different kinds of people in this country, everyone has their own ways of living, this might seem so unacceptable to you, but hey, it’s her life, you don’t get to point fingers at it. Try to respect it. ”
I never discussed this matter with another person at school. One Month later, I got the girl’s weeding invitation. I didn’t go to the wedding because inside I still cannot approve this, but hey, I respect her decision, it’s her life.
As I started to get along with other kids at school, I found that many of the judgments that the girls passed to me on the first day of school about other people were wrong. But hey, this also doesn’t make them mean girls, they just don’t know enough about those people and they were actually trying to help me, I respect them for that.
Many years have went by, as a college senior, I can now truly appreciate the advantages of not judging. I’ve learned to respect all the diversity the world has in store, and because of that, I get to see the different sides of things and have made so many surprising discoveries.
Thanks to my host mom, what she thought me on my first day is still what I believe.