Judged or Judging?

 

I’m standing in the grocery store at 9 pm on a Monday night with both kids and my husband rushing around buying stuff for my Bear’s lunch for pre-school the next day.  I have crackers and peanut butter and bread at home, but I feel guilty not sending a “healthy” lunch so I buy grapes as well. Then again feeling guilty about all the plastic bags on a whim I buy two (plastic) sandwich holders, one for sandwich one for fruit.  We are out of juice bags and they are so expensive. There are cheaper ones, but they aren’t 100% juice and I worry that I’ll be labeled a “bad mom” for sending my kid with an overly processed drink, so I’ll send money for milk instead.  Only problem is I can’t find the paper with the information on buying milk and so as my husband puts my pre-schoolers to bed at 9:35 on a school night I am tearing apart the house looking for papers I can’t find and end up missing out on time with my husband. As I drift off to sleep that night I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have made re-usable fabric sandwiches bags instead of buying the plastic boxes with a giant brand logo on them.

No wonder I am exhausted! Just typing that exhausted me. Just reading it exhausted me. Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we get all hung up on the silly little things? I’m all for a balance, healthy lunch, but really? I ruined a whole evening stressed over my 4 year olds lunch? There aren’t even any other mothers at the school during lunch. And even if there were, what would it matter? Why am I so stressed over being judge?

If I were to be honest I would admit that the reason I worry about being judge is because I judge others so very often. I don’t think this is just a mom thing. It may be a universal thing. I am not sure. I am not a man so I won’t make a statement about how they think. But I am a woman. And I know how women think. I think deep down the reason we are all so worried about being judged is because we are all so busy judging others. The question is WHY?

We all want to make the best choices for our lives. And, for whatever reason, we worry that if someone else made a different choice than ours, then maybe we made the wrong one. “What do they know that I don’t?” we wonder.   So, to make ourselves feel better, we assume they have made the wrong choice. Obviously ours is the right choice, so if they made a different one, they must be wrong. We judge them for not being as well researched, enlighten, opened minded, ect as ourselves.

I believe in absolute truth. I also believe that so many of things we divide ourselves on are NOT matters of absolute; they are, at most, matters of conviction and, at least, matters of preference.

I stumbled across a quote a while back. “The more you love your choices, the less you need others to love them.” I love the truth in this. If I feel judged about a choice I simple ask myself a question. Do I love this choice? If the answer is no, then OK, I need to re think this choice. If I answer, yes, then GREAT, move on, embrace that choice, and free others to do the same with their choices.  If I spent less time judging others and more time loving them wherever they fall on the vaccination (homeschooling/all organic/home-birth) spectrum.  We need community, and I truly believe that demanding every one think alike is the death of true community. So maybe, just maybe if I quite judging, I would feel a little less judged.