This I Believe: Throw Away Your Judgments
By: Genae Salinas
We do it every day. We do it in the hallways of buildings, outside on campus, at parties and on the streets down town. We can’t help ourselves— it’s human nature.
We judge each other.
It’s unfair, it’s mean and it’s senseless— but we all do it, myself included. I know that as humans we’ll probably never be able to stop judging each other entirely, but we must at least try. Imagine a world where people make no judgments based off of shallow, artificial ideas.
We judge people by the color of their skin, the clothes they wear, the way they speak, their physical features and even by the clubs and organizations they’re affiliated with. I’m sure I’m not only speaking for myself when I say that my original preconceptions of someone are almost never accurate. I always find myself surprised by aspects of one’s personality, mostly because it’s not what I assumed it to be.
And what’s perhaps even worse is that we all know others are judging us as we do things like walk to class or go to the store. We know how terrible it feels to be superficially criticized, yet we continue to judge others regardless.
I’ve been in the position where I see someone eyeing me up, guessing at my personality, making assumptions at the person they think I am. We try not to let it get to us, but it can be hard. We want others to like us— we want to make a good impression. We’ve become a self-conscious, mild-mannered society because we’re too afraid to stand out and act differently. We think, What if everyone judges me?
And that’s pathetic.
I believe people are inherently good at the core and deserve to be understood by their personality, not by their appearance or anything else superficial.
I believe the world would be a better place to live if we spoke to each other and learned about each other before deciding what someone is really like.
I believe we should toss away our judgments and never let them affect how we see others.