Havent blogged in a long while. Had many thoughts about serious issues, but not enough to write a proper dissertation on. Heh.
Been around many people and new experiences these past month. Each situation is a new lesson about myself, about people, about the world around me. Just when i thought i knew myself as a student and person, life challenges that thought and God starts peeling layers off me.
What is most significant is the layer of judgement. We always hear about people being judgemental; we also subconsciously judge people based on their appearances, their words, their actions, their inactions, their intentions as perceived through our highly disjointed perspectives. But im not here to talk about how we should not judge people. It’s like saying, “don’t breathe”; we can try, but we cant monitor our thoughts and filter our perception of people without getting into severe frustration. (Not on our own anyways.) I’m here to project some of my thoughts which i hope would add more flavour to the word “judgement”, which is all too weighted and laden with seriousness and negative stuff (here i am judging the word, if i were to use “judging” loosely. Hah.)
As humans, we see things from our own self-centred perspective. Well, mostly. And even when we try to put ourselves in others’ shoes, we comprehend and evaluate according to our own experiences, emotional responses and logical deductions. What’s worse, we sometimes even try to imagine how others view us. That’s how we complicate matters eh? Even as i write this now, what i type is also partially affected by how i think you would read this, how you would respond to my words, how you would perceive me. Do i really care? In a sense, yes. I hate being misunderstood, but it is inevitable; i cannot control what each and every one of you thinks of me, nor is it any good for me to put in too much effort of portraying a side of me that appeals to the masses.
That is basically what judgement is about (and i mean “basically” like “foundationally” and “essentially”, rather than “simplistically saying”). It isnt always about labelling people as arrogant or impatient. Nor is it always about someone in power pronouncing a fate of another “lower” being. It’s about taking a situation or a person and squeezing it into our narrow perception of life, of things, of people, of everything. Sometimes, we think we know what we are thinking; we can get so caught up in our own justification that we forget our basis of justification is just as flawed as anyone else’s. That’s the problem most of the time; because we do this, it can result in us coming to the conclusion that so-and-so is arrogant or impatient; because we go by our own value systems, if i may put it this way, we can occasionally feel the need to pronounce our thoughts about people and situations (which are actually merely our own thoughts), as final or 100% certain.
And i think im putting my thoughts across very poorly; it may seem like im being exceedingly critical about how we judge people and things. But that’s not my main point. My main point is: thinking about what others think of us. I tend to do this alot. Hence, i tend to overcomplicate matters and situations with other people. And recently when i figured about the new perspective of how we squeeze a situation into our narrow perception of things, it made sense that i was doing the same when i thought about what others think of me and how they would view a particular situation. It seemed incongruent and much more absurd that im using my perspectives to judge myself based on what i perceive others would of me. It is highly futile and again i say, absurd, that i always do it.
So why do i, and im sure many other people, keep thinking about my so-called image and portrayal? Cos we fear that we are unaccepted, out of place, inappropriate. To say the least, we dont feel wanted and fear being lonely/outcasted. I may have simplified the thought process too quickly, but many times i realised it is the case (for me that is…). What will happen if i say what i really feel? What wil happen if i do as i please? What will happen if i dont do this? Will he see me differently? Will she think im that sort of person? All these i gather now, are quite pointless. To a certain extent, we can affect the situation and others’ perception of us. Quite a large one i would say. But in the end, trying too hard is counter-productive. In the end, we dont really have the control whether we will be accepted or loved or respected or hated. I guess that is probably what the Bible says about not judging ourselves. We judge ourselves by what we think others will think about us and perceive us to be. There’s basis in that statement, as much as it perplexed me at first. (there’s also another perspective about how we should not judge ourselves to be good or bad, etc.)
All that’s been said can be summed up in a question that i have distilled from a few people: Is the image you worry about when you think about others’ perception of you the image of the real you, or merely what you hope others will see you as?
This question has implications about our identity and our expectations of ourselves and others.
Hmmm.
