Here Comes the Judgement

I was not in a good mood this morning and I couldn't find the cause. After all, everything is going quite well these days. I tried to relieve my foul mood by listing all that was fine in my world:

- My big toe, which I sprained trying to close up the chicken coop in the rain, was feeling better.
- Turns out, my 10 year old has the beginnings of a breast, not a heart-stopping breast lump (this may sound silly, but it was only on one side and it threw me!)
- I was paid by a client. Financial ruin is staved off for yet another month.
- We're having steak for dinner (see item 3, above). And the kids have yet to find the mint chocolate chip ice cream.

I brought up my bad mood with a friend of mine. As we relived my morning, the cause of my mood became apparent.

It was all about judgement. My judgement of others. Earlier that day, while sipping my coffee and trolling the Net, I had read a rather self-congratulatory post from someone on Facebook (not unusual- "self-congratulatory" and "FB post" are usually redundant terms). The post reminded me of some behavior the postee was engaging in that didn't seem kosher to me. I read the post once, then twice more, each time with increasing feelings of judgement. My coffee, at first so delicious, seemed a bit bitter.

I was unaware when I turned off my computer that I had given birth to a bouncing baby bad mood, quickly developing as it munched steadily on the diet of negative energy I was providing.

Trying to get in the car I dropped my keys, then hit my head on the car door. Boom, my mood entered elementary school. On my short commute to my office, I was cut off twice. Welcome to the tween years.

I believe it was when I realized the computer had eaten an unsaved document that I had slaved over for 30 minutes that my mood zoomed straight through senior prom and graduated as a fully formed negative element, completely taking over my brain.

Speaking with my friend, I recognized that a simple facebook post had ruined my morning.  This realization was followed by the more sobering thought- I was responsible for the ruination of my morning, not the facebook post.

By judging someone else, I only affected my own behavior. My judgement reflected on me, not the person to whom it was directed.

Dr. Paul Richard, a reknown Professor at the Center for Critical Thinking, explained this paradigm when he succintly stated,

"All judgement is self-judgement."

A simple but profound thought. Not only was my judgement of another affecting my mood, it was also a reflection of inadequacies within myself. Yikes.

A simple judgement, a quick snap of a few neurons, had caused a foul mood that lasted hours, AND was really an expression of my own negative traits.

One judgement call had resulted in so much havoc. I can be pretty judgemental at times. I shudder to think how much energy I've wasted in my life. Energy I could have used in a positive way to change unwanted behavior traits in myself.

I was grateful to my friend for helping me see the genesis of my own behavior. I used this knowledge to sit for a few minutes, quietly letting the lesson sink in. I thought about how my judgement call was actually about me. I was aware that this lesson is one that I have learned previously, and will likely need to re-learn in the future. But for the first time I was able to accept this knowledge passively without beating myself up about it. I mentally apologized to myself and to my Facebook friend for demeaning us both. My bad mood seemed to lessen. I felt like I had room in my head to think more clearly.

The rest of the day was much easier all around. I was able to handle my kids' usual craziness without batting an eye. In fact, I actually felt a surprising rush of love as I watched them proclaim their undying hatred for each other one minute, then share hysterical laughter the next minute while watching a YouTube video.

"If you judge people, you have no time to love them."  Thanks, Mother Teresa.