Natasha Fondren

I’ve really been feeling anti-judgment, lately. I’m just astonished at how much we judge everything. Constantly. We don’t even notice. Even little, tiny things.

Someone decides to get married? We must make a judgment on it. Everyone must have an opinion, and it must be FOR or AGAINST.

Someone wants to X route in their writing career? The community must make a judgment on how that’s either DUMB or the SMARTEST THING EVER.

Someone wants to feed the birds? We must all consider the possible ramifications and MAKE A JUDGMENT. And then DECLARE OUR OPINION.

(So here I go, making a judgment.)

In Kindergarten, we have to learn right and wrong and such. We start sorting things into black and white, because that’s how we understand the world. As we grow up, we start to recognize the gray area. We mature.

I’ve been thinking that the optimum time for a human being is in their early twenties or so, when they still recognize the gray area. Because it seems that as we get older, we start forgetting about the gray area. We start filing ourselves into FOR or AGAINST with everything. We get rigid in our thinking.

We de-mature to Kindergarten.

This is a generalization, of course, so it doesn’t apply to everyone. And I’ve often thought it doesn’t completely apply to writers and actors and the like, because we so regularly step into other people’s shoes.

I want to be about understanding, not about judgment. I don’t want to choose a side: I want to find a middle ground, or at least some way where we can let people live their lives, as long as it harms none.

The little judgments we make are astounding. And to have an opinion is a judgment, too. But a blog needs opinions. And I just seem to be flat out of those, lately. They make me tired, because then everyone will have to sort themselves into FOR or AGAINST.

What think you?