Being a Human

I'm the first person to qualify people. He is loud, she is fat, he is boring, he sucks, she's dumb or whatever about them is bad, I'll identify it in my mind, often I'm vocal about it. Not necessarily to their face but I'll joke about it with friends, my wife or even strangers. I'm really judgemental towards people and its bad. This is not the best quality of mine.

So what do you do when you are going through your day, just like any day and you find out something about the person that makes you stop judging them and see beyond their flaws and see them as a person? Maybe you find out someone in their life is dying, they are dying, their wife left them, they have a fake leg, they have severe constipation, they are broke or they lost their job.

This happened to me yesterday at our softball game. One of the guys on our team doesn't really fit in, we tend to be a pretty laid back team, this guy is always screaming his head off at teammates and the other team. He's intense to say the least. As someone who is not very good at softball lets just say I've had my fair share of being screamed at. I do not like being screamed at and I do not this guy who screams at me. I speak bad about him to other people on the team as others do. Last night following the ass whipping we received he and I were walking towards our cars. At first it was awkard silence. As we passed by the restrooms he noticed a sign that said, "NO LOITERING." He said to me, "Who loiters outside the men's restroom at Tom Brown Park?" I thought, "he's right, who does loiter there?"I really enjoyed this observation. We had a great time wondering just who might have caused them to post that sign. So as I got in my truck I felt an unsettling feeling, I just had a laugh and a really great moment chatting with this guy I can't stand. How can that be?

It makes you pause and say to yourself, "maybe I was wrong about this guy, maybe they aren't so bad." You realize you've been unkind to this person, made fun of this person all while they have the ability to make you laugh or maybe while they've been going through something tragic.

Now, if you're a judgemental person, like myself, you've got a problem. Problem is they are tougher to fit into your classifications of either a) person I like or b) person I don't like. So instead you say things like, "I'm sure he's a nice person but I don't like working with him" or "I'm sure he is a good person he just bugs me." This way it seems like you don't hate them, which is true you don't hate them but it doesn't make things any nicer.

I guess what I'm saying is try not to be so mean. Even the people you hate have things about them you could love.