I believe in never judging a book by its cover.
Whenever I used to talk about other people to either of my parents they always look at me and say “Randall, you never know what other people are going through, don’t judge a book by its cover, treat everyone with compassion.” When I was younger I would always get annoyed, of course I knew what they were going through, I thought I knew everything. And “don’t judge a book by its cover,” could you get more cliche??
As I got older, I began to realize that you could not tell everything about a person just by looking at them or even talking to them, and that being compassionate was an important part of being a good friend and a good person. This way of thinking gained even more meaning to me my junior year of high school.
When I was a junior in high school one of my close friends was diagnosed with cancer. There were a lot of things about her diagnosis that changed the way I view life but one of the things that influenced me most was how she carried herself while she was going through treatment. Most times she would still get to school before me in the mornings and whenever I got to homeroom she greeted me with a smile on her face. I admired her ability to have such a positive attitude despite what she was going through, and it made me reflect on what strangers would think of when they saw her, especially in the early stages of her treatment. To the outside world, she was just a 17-year-old girl, attending college visits, going to high school classes and cheering on our high school basketball team, but at the same time she was going through something unimaginable. Though these perceptions were never negative in their nature, it was still shocking to me to think about how easy it is to form opinions about someone’s life and how they could differ so greatly from reality.
Witnessing the way my friend presented herself versus what I knew she was going through reminded me of the words that I had rolled my eyes at years before. I could hear my mom’s voice saying “Randall, you never know what other people are going through, don’t judge a book by its cover, treat everyone with compassion.” The phrase had new meaning to me and the situation, paired with the saying, changed the way I viewed and treated the people around me. Treating people with kindness and compassion became my first priority as I realized that most people, on some level, are fighting a battle that you might not be able to see.
As humans I think that it is innate to form perceptions of people based on just looking at them. Sometimes these perceptions are negative and sometimes they are positive but either way they affect how we think about others. However, experiences throughout my life have taught me how to take those perceptions with a grain of salt and to treat everyone equally no matter your initial impression. You never know what someone else is going through, and it is important to consider this before arriving at a conclusion about the individual.