I like to think that as I get older I get more receptive to other views and other people’s experience-based points of view. However I’m not sure this is true, either for me or more widely. This year I’ve found that other people’s choices and behaviours have been scrutinised and found lacking, against an unpublished standard. I know I have been guilty of it myself and usually in relation to people I’m less keen on and whose actions have been a reversion to type or a confirmation of what I had originally thought. I think this allows me to justify it to myself, particularly when people I cherish have been hurt or adversely impacted by others.
However when it’s people I hold dear who behave in disappointing or surprising ways, I find it difficult. I am aware that I haven’t walked the obligatory “mile in their shoes” and am not aware of all the facts or circumstances leading up to their decisions but I still find myself judging. I was accused this weekend of being in “team x” over a current disagreement which surprised me. I hadn’t realised teams were necessary, had been decided or even who would be “team y”.
I’ve had conversations about this with two people that I trust implicitly who have very different views of the issue at hand and I’m still no wiser. Think I may sit this one out until my moral compass is fixed. Failing that, I may take a leaf out of Zeus’s book and get someone else to deal with it (but hopefully not start another Trojan war….)
[if you don’t know the story of the Judgment of Paris, you can find it here]
kuddelmuddelling 