It is easy for us to judge others. We end up judging people all around us every day. I am no different and have been guilty of this phenomenon in my life. However, I did realise through some incidents in my life that it is not fair to judge others without knowing the background or the context. What we see may not be the whole. We generally end up seeing only the part of the circumstances and end up judging.

I recently heard of an incident about a doctor, who was late to the operation theatre. The parents of the kid who was seriously injured were waiting outside the intensive care unit waiting for the doctor. As the doctor arrived, the parents were agitated that he was delayed and their son may not survive because of his delay. The doctor apologised for the delay and went ahead with the operation. After completing the operation, the doctor assured the parents that the kid will survive and left the hospital in a hurry.

After the doctor left the hospital in a hurry, when the agitated parents enquired as to why the doctor was in a hurry, the nurse explained that the doctor’s son had died in an accident in the morning. He rushed to the hospital from the grave yard because of the emergency. Now, he is rushing back to the graveyard to complete the cremation of his son. On hearing this, the parents fainted and felt miserable in judging the doctor without knowing the full story.

Life is similar. We end up judging others without knowing the full story. It happens every day in our lives. If our child is late from school, we scold the kid even without enquiring the reasons for the delay. After we have passed the judgement, we neither have the time nor the patience to listen to the child’s true story. When such an incident repeats itself, the child stops telling us the truth because she believes it is of no use as anyway she will be scolded by her parents.

This happens in the work place too. If an employee is regularly late to work, we assume that the person is indisciplined and pass a judgement even without asking or listening to the employee. We tend to brand such employees and then such employees lose their self confidence. They get branded for no fault of theirs. They lose interest in work and sometimes even in life. On listening to them, we may realise that they are going through a very serious crisis in their personal lives and they need our emotional support the most.

We also take our friends and relatives for granted. If a friend does not wish us on our birthday, we end up thinking that he has betrayed us and even forgotten our birthday. We make our judgement on one single incident without taking the pain to find out why it happened. In today’s world the mobile phone and its messaging systems has also led to a lot of misunderstandings and judgements.

We need to wake up and realise that we shape not only our destiny but also those of our near and dear ones. We not only have a responsibility to be happy in life but also contribute to the happiness of others around us. How can we make others happy if we misjudge them every other day ? Can we resolve to ourselves that we will not judge anyone without getting the full picture ?

Let us promise to ourselves that we will put ourselves in the other person’s position and listen them before coming to any conclusions. This will ensure that we are empathetic. This will reduce misunderstanding and help us cement our relationships. It is time to become non-judgemental. Although easier said than done, it is time to realise the perils of judging others.

We generally think all policeman are corrupt. In this case, this person proved otherwise by being honest through his deeds.

May be time to look at the mirror before judging others !

S Ramesh Shankar