There Is No Judgement Here…

These days, it is very much the norm to look at another human being and dissect them right down to the smallest detail.  We are encouraged by the media and the internet to form an opinion on someones eyebrows, dress size, choice of car, whether they breast feed their baby and where, what colour/make of phone they use, who they are dating, who they voted for or if they voted, what country they are from, which eye they blinked with first…..the list goes on and on and on and it is exhausting to be part of.  Not only does it make you feel shitty about yourself ( ‘if I’m constantly judging everyone, they MUST be doing back to me’), it also makes  you feel really shitty about everyone else as well.

What a waste of time and energy.  And I don’t mean energy in the hippie ‘positive thinking’ way, I mean ACTUAL energy.  It is tiresome.  This state of ‘judge or be judged’ is like the new age ‘fight or flight’; to constantly be alert to the possible snide comment or funny look that might be  thrown your way as you pass on the street.  We all do it, all the time.  We’re all guilty of the ‘she should not be wearing that’ comment or ‘As if her mates let her leave the house in that’ remark as someone enters the bar or whatever and if we are holding up hands right now then mine would have to be firmly in the air.

Both of them in fact.

I know I do it to either make myself feel better on a bad day or because I don’t like that person or they are wearing something I wish I had the guts to wear but wouldn’t…all horrid reasons to pick another person apart.  ‘I’m having a bad day so your life choices suck’ is awful.

What would happen if, just for a day, we looked at everyone with a different filter on?

What if, instead of trying to make ourselves feel better or whatever dark and twisty reason we are doing it for, we bigged up every person we looked at?

The ‘You go Glenn Coco’ of the real world.  Everyone is Glen Coco and you want them to GO.  Not away, but go for whatever it is that they are trying to do with their day/life.

Just in your head, you don’t have to actually speak to anyone don’t panic.

I am aware that this is starting to sound like a motivation, positive vibes kinda blog which I guess it is in the most synical way possible; maybe I’m getting old and mellowing in my age but I just cannot be arsed with it anymore.  Holding yourself up against 7 billion people and what their opinions of you might be or not be is debilitating, self indulgent and pointless so why bother?  And why bother being part of it the other way round also.

My boyfriend pointed out to me something the other day.  Walking through town, I kept noticing that people were looking at me.  I asked him to check that nothing was on me and asked him three times if I looked ok.  On the third time he asked me why I was asking so much and I said that I had noticed a lot of people looking at me.  He said ‘So?’, so matter of factually that I suddenly realised that he was right. So what if they were?  For an hour of my day, I had felt so shitty about myself, worrying that people were looking at me for all sorts of negative reasons (and some of them probably were) but the fact that there could have been millions of positive things they could have been thinking OR, maybe they weren’t realising they were looking at me at all never crossed my mind for a second.

And when you really think about it, what would it matter either way?  My day was only affected by it because I chose to  notice, care and make a big deal out of it.

I guess what I am trying to say is stop with the judging.  Of yourself, of others of everyone.  Social media makes it very easy to do it without a seconds though.  Programmes like The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent set our minds to become judge, jury and executioner on everyone we meet and it has to stop.

As I say to my mates when they tell me something embarrassing ‘Dude, I’ve eaten my own sick for a bet before, there’s no judgement here’ and there isn’t.  Not anymore.

There is no Judgement here.