Judging Other People

I don't believe that the following contains any great original insights. On the contrary, I think most of us already know all of the this.

The problem is that, for some reason, many of us, maybe most or almost all of us, seem to constantly forget it. I don't know why that is. But it seems to me it couldn't hurt to try to remind whoever reads this of these few fairly obvious things.

According to an interview I read in the 1980's, Cormac McCarthy said, "When you stop worrying what other people think of you, you have cleared one of the major hurdles in life," or words to that effect. That has always struck me as excellent advice. I'm not sure I've actually cleared that hurdle -- I don't know whether Mr McCarthy has either -- but I strive to clear it.

According to Matthew 7:1, Jesus said, "Judge not." I first heard that one when I was a small child, and I've always thought that it too is good advice.

Let's do a thought-experiment: let's say that there are 26 people who all live on the same block of one-family houses, and let's call them A through Z. 

It may be unusual for someone to judge others by one criterium above all others -- or it may not be unusual at all.  Be that as it may, I think it will help demonstrate my point if we imagine that several of these 26 people judge others primarily by a single measure.

So: A judges the 25 others according to the cars they drive. B judges them by the state of their houses. C judges them by the state of their lawns, and their gardens if the have any, and deducts points for not having a garden. D judges them according to their level of athletic physical fitness and overall physical attractiveness. E judges them just by the hair. F judges them by their clothes and fashion sense. G, a Christian, tries very hard not to judge anyone, in accordance with the verse from Matthew quoted above. H judges them according to the watches they wear, or carry in their pockets in the case of pocket watches, and deducts huge points for neither wearing nor carrying a watch. And I through Z each hardly ever notice the other 25 at all.

The point of the thought-exercise is to demonstrate the folly of worrying what others think of you. A through Z will probably never know very much about how they are judged by their neighbors. And even if they did know, they would see that they are judged differently by different people, making it impossible to impress all of them, and pointless to even try.

If you object that people judge others by a multiplicity of criteria, then that just makes it even harder to impress them all, and even more pointless to even try. Given that you agree that the criteria for judging others varies greatly from one individual to the next. 

Which I think that any reasonable adult would agree. Although I'd try not to judge you for disagreeing.

This Is Who I Am

There's an episode of "The Simpsons" in which Lisa is afraid that she's losing her intelligence (SPOILER ALERT: Turns out she's fine.), and at one point, in despair, she decides to just give up and join the other stupid members of the family, Homer and Bart, as they sit on the couch, cheering as they watch a TV show about buildings being destroyed. Lisa complaines because it's not supper time yet and she's hungry, and Homer reveals that he and Bart have that covered, pulling up a sofa cushion to reveal some melted candy and crushed cookies. Her horror at the thought of eating melted candy and crushed cookies makes her change her mind and not give up without solving the case of her seemingly-dwindling intellect.

The thing is, I don't mind if candy is melted or if cookies are crushed. To me, they're still pretty much the same.

Moreover -- it never even occurred to me, before I saw that episode of "The Simpsons," that someone could be horrified by the thought of eating melted candy or crushed cookies. But Lisa was horrified by it, and apparently the makers of the show assumed that some or most of their viewers would be similarly horrified.

So. For a long time, I was somewhat horrified by the thought of other people being horrified by me because they saw me eating melted candy or a crushed cookie. But now I'm coming out and telling you, telling the world, that that's exactly who I am. As a matter of fact, I'm having a piece of a crushed cookie right now, and it's delicious! (It's a piece of a chocolate-chip-and-M&M cookie from Bob Evans. They crush it.) (Figuratively. What I'm saying is that they make a very good chocolate-chip-and-M&M cookie.)

If you can't be friends with me or look me in the eye ever again, well, that's that. That's how it is. And I might not never have noticed about you not looking me in the eye anyway, because I'm autistic and I make eye contact much less frequently than most people do.

PS: I rarely find crumbs of food under my sofa cushions and when I do I don't eat them. And if you do things like that, I judge you, am horrified by you and shun you. Not really, but ewwwwww.

[PPS, April 10, 2020: I've thought about it a lot in the meantime, and now I agree with Lisa Simpson that it DOES matter quite a bit if cookies are crushed or candy bars are melted. We live, and sometimes we learn.]