The Right Way to Judge Others.

Judging is something inherent to humans. Since the stone age we’ve been judging people, classifying them into categories: friend or foe. However, although the nature is similar, we’ve evolved to judge people into many other criteria as well. 

In the modern day, we judge to validate how compatible an individual is with us, whether they’re someone we can trust, rely on, or someone we’re better off distancing from.

Although judging is natural and common, whether done to people as a whole, their personalities, or their actions, often times we tend to approach it the wrong way. Wrongfully judging people and misunderstanding them could lead to false perceptions of people. Someone desiring good for you could be perceived as desiring bad for you, and someone desiring bad for you could be perceived as desiring good for you. Worst of all, in cases like these, it may be too late when you actually realize the true motives behind someone’s actions.

One of the common reasons leading people to have misjudgments about people could be treating others’ actions independently from their personality or their intentions.

Let’s express this through an example:

Rafi is a 13 year old kid from New Delhi, India. He goes to school, loves playing cricket and is also a part of a bunch of activities in his community in the society he lives in.

As puberty grazed him, Rafi naturally started changing, perhaps a little every month but evidently so. Rafi saw his classmates begin to swear more than usual. They always used to, but now, it seemed like they couldn’t go forth with a single sentence without cussing. And just like how any environment affects every component inside it, Rafi too was affected. Swearing and cussing was often not the case within households in the part of Delhi Rafi lived in. Especially, not his house.

Slowly yet surely, Rafi too started cussing, but only kept it to his friends. 

What started as an addition of extra words to sentences which provided no value had slowly begun to evolve among Rafi’s group. It was accompanied by disrespectful gestures too. Casually pushing people to intimidate them, speaking in louder voices, cutting people off, you name it.

Without a doubt, everyone among Rafi’s friend group was involved, including him off course. Enriching their discourteousness as they grew wilder with age, yet screening it from their families and anyone else who could give them trouble for it. However,  giving in to their biological human nature, one could only mask themselves for so long.

Rafi entered his home on one hot evening in June. The daily school in the heat combined with an extra cricket session left him drained to the core. Like any other day, he looked forward to unwinding with some lunch, savouring his favorite shows while he ate. To Rafi’s surprise, as he tossed his bag in his room and lunged towards his couch to make himself at home, he noticed his uncle was there too, the one who never visits. Rafi’s uncle is greatly passionate about cricket and due to some technical glitches, he wasn’t able to see an important final at his home and had come over to Rafi’s place to watch it on the big screen. 

Rafi was infuriated. He kept thinking to himself, “An entire day of school in this heat, an exhaustive cricket session and I don’t even deserve to have lunch in peace?”. Rafi, feeling famished, thirsty, and utterly exhausted, let go of the restraint he normally possessed over his flip side. He snatched the remote off his uncle’s hands and switched the TV off. He proceeded to nudge his uncles arms  and yell at him before exiting the hall in anger and shutting the door on him.

It wasn’t late until Rafi’s father finally arrived, delayed due to extra work. Upon getting to know what Rafi had done, his father was infuriated, he went into the room and tried to confront Rafi. Rafi, still in his disrespectful tone, yet to wear off blatantly ignored his father and let out a cuss at the situation. His father, to whom confronting Rafi did no good except enlightening him of the new vocabulary Rafi had learnt, saw only one clear way of getting the message across when his words did no good. 

He unbuckled his belt and folded it in half while Rafi angrily stared at him, looking both, stern and nervous.

Having lived a life with all sorts of experiences, Rafi’s father was well aware of the difference between discipline and abuse, he recalled a popular saying from his time “spare the rod, spoil the child”. He hit Rafi with a few strikes until Rafi’s tears finally melt the sternness of his anger. Rafi was surprised, his father had never hit him before and always behaved tenderly, he thought to himself, not remembering the things he had done and the way he had acted in front of his infuriated father. “There’s a fine line between being mischievous and being disrespectful.” said Rafi’s father before leaving the room. 

Rafi took the beatings to heart, ignoring the gravity of his own mistakes. It changed the way he had looked at his father forever, Rafi became more closed off and cold towards his father, he was too young and naive to understand what his father really intended to do. Rafi’s mother explained to him multiple times that his father loved him dearly and only wished to correct Rafi of something which would be a huge menace for him down the line, yet Rafi was too obstinate to accept any explanations, “You hit the ones you hate, despise or dislike mumma, if he hit me that means he doesn’t love me”. Such was the perception of Rafi.

Time marched on. Rafi grew up and eventually found himself in university. He remained distant from his father but still valued him and only begun to value him more. He had developed a respectful and sweet tongue, a stark contrast to his earlier years. Throughout his school life, he often recalled the consequences he faced because of that one event in 8th grade.

As his university life progressed, Rafi noticed a lot of things which he hadn’t seen before, sure his friends used to mock and make all sorts of jokes about their teachers and other people but they always knew somehow in the back of their minds to give respect to people in life, especially your deserving elders and teachers, but now, as his years in his higher institution progressed he realised many people were quite foul in their language, not only very directly to the teachers but also to their parents. All of this was unfathomable for Rafi, for a child to get a call from his parent and for the same child to swear at his own father or mother on the call and hang it up by himself. He could never imagine doing the same to his own parents or for anyone he knew intimately to do the same.

Although Rafi started to despise such actions and values from among his peers, it did not stop him from being observant. He would often notice how crowds of well-spoken or successful students would not only disregard but completely ignore the existence of those who blatantly displayed rudeness and disrespect. It became clear to Rafi that respect and humility were qualities highly valued by those who truly achieved success and earned admiration. This is not to mention, even many of the professors gave such students a very hard time earning a passing grade, it was only evident, their sheer bitterness whenever they opened their mouths or acted was enough to shoo anyone of principles away from them.

Rafi had gotten curious, what could drive someone to be so needlessly bitter? He thought of interacting with them but to no avail, they would always say something too disrespectful for Rafi to bear, even in a casual tone and Rafi would eventually have to leave as his self respect could bear no more. 

Rafi started to retrospect his own upbringing, what could end him up like this? He realised his parents were always kind, generous and forgiving towards him, except the few times. He buried himself in the same haze he did years ago, why would his father hit him if he truly loved him? Generally, hitting someone usually represents hate or resentment, does that mean his father hated him? It was all very contradictory, his father had done so much for him that he couldn’t truly count his efforts towards him, then why? He started thinking about all the times he did get hit, perhaps that could give him a pattern to dwell upon. He was well aware he was only hit when he crossed the boundaries of disrespect, and then, suddenly, it clicked to him, his father had never really hit him, but disciplined him. As he saw the consequences of disrespect live in front of him with every passing day, he could only imagine how his friend group and relationships would have turned out, vastly different, had he not been disciplined. He realised despite loving him, his father mustered the strength to teach him a lesson which would benefit him for the rest of his life. A lesson so crucial that if slept upon, could single handedly change the trajectory of Rafi’s life, for the worse. A series of such realisations made Rafi throw away whatever resentment he had in his heart for his father, and lead him to  finally realize :

TLDR : Not every action can be judged solely by itself and what moral category it falls into for the general majority. Every action is an event inspired by the intentions of the doer. To judge the people around us accurately, we must consider the context of their actions along with the intentions behind them. It is easy to judge someone on shallow terms based on a singular action on event but we forget that every action is often a byproduct of multiple complex strings woven into a single fabric. The multiples strings could often include a relevant context from the other person’s lens,  what the other person perceives from your actions or behaviour towards them and what is their motivation and intention, often times, intentions of a person are an easy way to judge their character. What makes someone a nice, sweet and good person is what they intend for you despite of what comes out of their mouths. Someone could be wishing well on you more than anyone but they may not necessarily express it, does that make them a bad person? Or does someone saying the nicest of things to you only to take advantage of you makes them a nice person? It would be completely deviant to judge someone without knowing their intentions and solely based off of their actions. This would turn out extremely grave as it may lead one to befriend the erroneous people while distancing themselves from the principled ones.