I live in a town crisscrossed by railroad tracks that have very active routes. It’s impossible to traverse the two neighboring towns without having to wait at at least one railroad crossing. A line of cars can stretch blocks and take half an hour for traffic to clear. I feel immense responsibility crossing after a train has passed so I can do my part in keeping traffic moving. But there always seems to be that car. Usually a big 4×4 truck that inches over the crossing like its climbing over eggshells. It’s exasperating! A vehicle designed to climb mountains is incapable of crossing a couple railroad ties? I ride that bumper yelling, “Don’t buy something you’re not actually going to drive!”
One day I was supposed to provide a massive pot of chili to a fundraiser. I used the biggest pot I owned and filled it nearly to the brim. I cooked all morning and we loaded into the truck. And then had to cross the railroad tracks to get to the church. A pot of boiling hot chili on the floorboards between my feet, my husband inched our 4×4 offroad-capable truck over the railroad crossing like the road was filled with eggs containing baby chicks. I looked in the side mirror at the line of vehicles stretching increasingly longer behind us and imagined how I would be screaming at this slow-moving crosser.
It’s so easy to see the world through your own pair of glasses. Glasses tinted with your own experiences and outlook. And then to assume the rest of the world owns the exact same prescription. “Walk a mile in someone’s shoes” may be a popular catchphrase, but not something most people are accustomed to actually doing. Not unless we’re forced.
I find myself judging people and situations quickly and without much thought. I think we’re all guilty of it in varying degrees. It explains so many of our disagreements and divisions in society.
It was a cold evening late in winter. Pitch black even though it wasn’t even dinner time. We needed something from a store and while my little family was out running errands, it would be easy to stop and run in. But we had a new baby. Cranky in the car unless the vehicle was moving, our son had just fallen asleep. We weighed the situation trying to decide what would be “easiest” on our new family. I pulled to the curb in front of the doors and my husband jumped out and ran into the store. I then spent the next few minutes circling the parking lot, watching for my husband to reappear.
As I circled and prayed the baby would continue to snooze quietly, I remembered all those times I judged from afar this exact situation. A young, able-bodied person being dropped off at the store entrance, the car drives off somewhere but comes back just as the able-bodied person comes back out carrying a small bag. How lazy do you have to be? I would think. I wondered if someone was watching our situation and judging me the same way. I felt ashamed for all those quick assumptions in my past.
Again and again I have found myself living out a long-held judgment on the other side. Walking ten miles in that pair of shoes I sneered at in the past.
I was someone who complained about “welfare whores.” Those lazy people who lived off welfare. I had personal experience with such dredges of society and I was sure that the welfare system needed to be dismantled. Live or die! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! No one should get a free ride! Then my husband fell off a roof, was severely injured and out of work for a year. We had a 17-month old and a 4-month old and I wasn’t bringing home enough money in a month even with a full-time “good paying job” to pay our mortgage payment. There I was, applying for the welfare that I had so often felt so self-righteous toward. And I found out just how ridiculously hard we have made the welfare system. The hoops, the proof, the applications, the interviews, the weeding out. I cried daily. I was making less than $15 an hour, supporting a family of 4 and I couldn’t get help. It took months of applications before I was finally able to get any assistance. $270 a month in food stamps and WIC benefits for me and the kids. It was a horribly humbling experience and one that changed everything I’ve ever believed about welfare and is what I go back to every time I start to judge a person or a situation.
I believe we need to review situations from all sides. What would make someone believe this? Do this? Need this? What are they trying to get out of life? What has led them to this place? This decision? This action?
But also, we need to understand that some things just don’t concern us. What did it hurt me when an able-bodied person is dropped off at the front doors of a store? During the pandemic, there are jokes and judgments and criticisms about people driving in a car, alone, wearing a mask. But what does it matter? Who does it hurt? What are the consequences for this action? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t hurt anyone and there are no consequences for someone to wear a mask. In their car, in their own house, sitting on a park bench, or walking through a store.
In an effort to change my judgmental nature, I’ve started asking myself a series of questions:
- Does the situation harm me or anyone else in my life? If the answer is no, no further evaluation is necessary.
- Does the situation negatively effect my life or anyone else’s? If the answer is no, no further evaluation is necessary.
- What if I were that person? And I really try to imagine it. Maybe the person who cut me off in traffic is on their way to the hospital. Maybe that angry customer just received a cancer diagnosis.
So many times I have needed grace and understanding. So many times I thought “oh, if only you knew what I was going through right now.” Literally the least we can do for others is to start from a place of grace and understanding. How much different would our world be? Would our relationships be?