Silver

When I was 13, I challenged myself to stop being judgmental.  It stemmed from a challenge posed to me to strengthen a relationship with my beliefs.  Fresh out of a horrible Catholic school experience, I wasn't ready for that challenge to be religious, despite the spiritual focus intended.  My mentor through the process was patient and kind and suggested I challenge myself to figure out WHAT I believe in and to come up with a challenge that would help support that.

Sitting on a red rock formation in the desert at dusk, watching my friends prepping their camping equipment and settling in for the evening, I was asked "What DO you believe in?".  I remember pondering that question.  I remember jokingly answering "pre-marital sex!" (I was years away from it, but not that far away from being a smart ass.)  And then, while watching the antics of a person who has stalwartly stayed one of my closest lifelong friends, but had a tendency then (and sometimes now) toward the annoying...I said, quite simply...I believe in the goodness of people.

I continued (although without the gravitasse of Kevin Costner's BULL DURHAM speech or even a Chuck Lorre vanity card) to explain.  My recollection of what 13 year old me is strengthened by the fact that I was a writer, even then...and my journal explained it quite clearly.  Too lazy to find it and recount it verbatim right now, I hope you'll trust my paraphrasing... I decided that while I believed that all people were INHERENTLY good, their actions didn't always add up...but that I needed to force myself to stand by my beliefs.  To recognize that a person acting in an annoying or mean fashion may be doing it because of any number of reasons.  It could be because of their upbringing, fear, insecurities...any number of reasons over which they did not have control. And while every human can control their ACTIONS, that I needed to realize that no one was perfect and not judge them.  The 13 year old who had been judged since the 3rd grade for her weight, her unruly hair, her dramatic flair, her Jewish background, her Latina heritage, her general lack of cool points, her economic level, and her parents' divorce decided while sitting on that rock that she wanted to believe that people were good and her challenge was to NOT judge them when they acted in ways that were annoying, mean, or "bad".  Instead, to have patience and not "talk behind their back" and to hope that they would be able to learn the errors of their ways and find their way back to good.

Grownup me has trouble with this sometimes.  First off, certainly, in the wake of such serious current events like the uprising in Ferguson, or the domestic violence issues in the NFL, it's hard for grownup me to think anything but anger and frustration towards the people responsible.  13 year old me may have not been thinking about criminal activities, exactly, so it's possible her theories aren't foolproof.  But this morning, I found myself getting all worked up about a person's status update on Facebook.  A status so judgmental and self serving it made me want to punch something.  Or someone.  And then, as I do, I felt 13 year old me wearing the silver piece of cloth, symbolic of my challenge, tapping me on the shoulder and reminding me that anger and annoyance and frustration would not benefit me. 13 year old me reminding me that this person lives their life in fear.  That their status isn't INTENDING to hurt anyone.  And so, as she often does, grownup me calmed down and stopped judging and moved on.  Well, first I blogged.  But now I'm moving on.