I've been thinking a lot about it lately...
And I've realized something interesting about myself.
I've secretly.... Never felt judged before.
Really.
I don't think that I ever have been.
Well... I'm sure I have... but what even is it?
What is judgement?
Obviously it has a negative connotation- judging someone is frowned upon in our society, yet everyone does it blah blah blah.
But I've been seriously wondering why I've never felt angry at the masses for being judged or looked at or anything.
I think it's because I've never even thought to care.
Not the whole "I don't care what anyone thinks of me" kind of deal.
I, of course, care what my mom thinks of me, what my sisters think, what my important friends think. In other words. My people.
But the particulars of judgement from them are not on how I look, how I talk, or how long(short) my legs are. Only how I present myself, the content of my speech, the way I use my legs to carry myself.
The only thing I worry about is if I am staying true to myself.
The guilt starts to build, only in the instances when I find my conduct straying from or contradicting what I've shown to "my people" as Ari Kokol.
The action part is what is important.
Edgar Degas
That is the only thing that can be measured. Compared. Judged. As it should be.
I am grateful to my mother for have read Ayn Rand before I was born.
I'm reading The Fountainhead right now so hopefully I'm not too wacked out.
But, because my mom read Atlas Shrugged three times, I can now tell that she was influenced by the correct principles Ms. Rand portrays in her books. Don't be fooled. Ayn Rand is a bit of a lunatic genius... and some of her principles stray from what I actually believe. I am not her... but I will and do take what she says that I find to be truthful.
My mother raised me to look for the good in myself first. She raised me to discern between the elation you feel when someone compliments you, and the concrete and substantial elation you feel when you know you have done well, yourself.
Your own perception of yourself matters more than the perception of others.
My perception of myself is more important than others' and yet I care what my Family and Friends perceive me to be?
Let me explain the contradiction I have just made there.
My family and my friends.... [In a way I should just say 'friends.' In my later years I see my family as friends because I have chosen them as such. I was born to that family with no choice... but you even have to choose to love your family. It's not a given to love them. I've chosen to love them because of who they are.... Digression?]
.... are somewhat an extension of my beliefs.
My friends mean something to me because they themselves do not give in to the public critique. Therefore, they only judge me based on what I physically and mentally do. Because I do the same for them. It's why they're my friends in the first place. Why I've chosen them, as they have chosen me.
This is the basis of reality for me.
Thank you, Albert Einstein, for telling us scientifically that reality is relative- it only depends on how and who looks at a rock that the rock actually is.
He solidified the idea that our perception of who we are and our world around us is based on just that- our individual perception.
That is truth. That is reality.
Example: The half-empty vs. half-full situation.
They are both true. The pessimism and the optimism.
But who is to say the other is wrong? Who is to say the other is right? It depends on who looks at it- and that is still the truth. You may go about your day seeing every person on the street looking at you and feeling self-conscious because you are sure they are all shaking their heads, tilting their noses back, averting their eyes, and smiling with contempt for your existence.
OR.
You can walk down the street and see people going a
bout their business, walking straight ahead, glancing at you just because you were there, living their lives, for heaven's sake.
Which is true? Obviously by how I wrote that, it's easy to see my subjected opinion. Nonetheless, It is only true to how you look at it. Because either way, you are affected by your own perception of the street down which you walk. No one else's. Not even mine.
Judgement.
How about discernment.
Can you tell who a person is by their nose? No.
Can you guess who a person is by what clothes they wore that day?
Yes.
Why do I say that?
Guess who had a part, a decision, an action in both rhetorical queries? The second one.
There is no decision in a nose. There is an action, a choice, however, to be made in how you dress.
These are minuscule examples of a larger scale I'm attempting to say, here.
Start to look at the decisions of your life. The diminutive, seemingly insignificant choices you make every day are those nonetheless- choices.
Choices are a completely valid way to judge a person, whether you like it or not.
It's hypocritical to say that they cannot do as they please by passing judgment on you if you expect to be able to do what you please without being assessed.
You, of course, do not have to take into account what another person deems of you.
Which brings me back to the whole "live and let live" schpiel.
Most of you know me to always express my dissent in the expression "don't judge me."
Finally, I can put into words why.
It is a contradiction in and of itself.
By telling someone "not to judge" you take away their ability and right to discern and to make a choice themselves because they did not agree with a decision you made on your own.
If you did not care what anyone thought, if you honestly did not want anyone to judge you- you would not give them the satisfaction of being angry about their judgement.
On some level, I feel that those who verbally express their dissent for the public analysis actually crave public analyisis. They thrive, secretly, on what others think of them.
The truth of the matter: It connotes and portrays an ambience of victimhood, when in reality it is a desperate cry for the opposite of what it condemns: Contempt for humankind.
They crave it and hate it at the same time- because they need it to thrive, because they give it power. They let others take away their power and th
ey hate it. They cannot live without the approval of another so they verbally express the hatred of the approval of another.
I love humankind.
Dorothea Lange
Not because I'm supposed to, but because I really believe that after this whole "world" thing turns horribly wrong, after the wars and blood and tears and injustice and the Constitution is hanging on a thread stuff happens...
People will decide on what and who they are. That is, they are doers. We are those who make decisions and don't look back. We were meant for this to happen. Those of us who can look past the shame and guilt of the victims that tie us down, who can see reality in its truest form... Will be the strong ones. Those who will keep standing. Keep believing. Keep living.
We will end the internal war we have in ourselves between victim and hero. The hero part will win, if we let it.
It's inevitable.
