Dear Judgment

Dear Judgment,

What’s your deal? 

All of my life, I feel like I’ve been trying to distinguish between you and discernment, you and moral outrage, you and aspiration. 

Case in point: sometimes I think I am seeing the best in other people, what they are capable of, what they secretly dream for themselves that I know they can do and be…and it has felt like a burden to them. Like I am hovering around waiting for them to become someone else, someone better, someone more worthy of my love. What a terrible confusion–like I’ve sent a letter of admiration and faith that arrives looking like expectation and disappointment.  

Tara Brach says that radical acceptance is the most profound form of love. I think she may be your opposite, Judgment. 

Radical Acceptance sits under a tree, gazing adoringly at my children even if they’re watching their third hour of a cheesy tween show, genuinely wondering what it is that makes them laugh. She doesn’t have anything to say about other people’s phone usage or spending or punctuation. 

Judgment, on the other hand, skulks around, shoulders hunched, giving lectures on hoarding, commercialization, and how our digital lives are stripping us of our humanity. He sends well-crafted tweets to nowhere. He’s well-informed but no fun. He has obscenely good posture. He never drinks or eats too much. 

But I’m not a bad guy–aren’t there standards to be upheld? Aren’t their behaviors to be identified? Aren’t there moral bright lines to draw? You, Judgment, ask me, trying to stay calm and civilized. Trying not to team up with your neighbor, Righteousness.

You know who Radical Acceptance hangs out with? Complexity and Curiosity. Everything is layered and beautiful and unknowable. There are surprises around every corner, within every person and they’re enigmatic, wholly unique way of moving through this strange world. People are doing the best they can, and maybe their best is better than what you, Judgment, have decided is best. Why are you the decider? I guess that’s the real question: who deputized you to skulk around knowing what’s best for everybody?   

But if you banish me, Judgment reminds, you lose your edge! You lose your ethical cajónes! You become a soft, agreeable woman gliding through life, favoring kindness over clarity and filial piety over fierceness. No one wants to get a coffee with that woman unless they’re up to something sketchy and need a neutral confessor.      

Judgment, your fatal mistake is that you think you understand more about the insides of other people than you possibly can. And you long so deeply for a world of bright lines and ethical hierarchy because the notion comforts you. 

You invite your favorite sober drunk, Solvability, to the party and a boy band called Unintended Consequences shows up instead and insists on playing beer pong all night. Radical Acceptance, rather than shutting it down, asks the boys to teach her the game, soothing them when they get too loud and sloppy.

You try to pretend none of it is happening, but Radical Acceptance sidles up beside you at some point, on the dark of the dance floor, and gives you a hug as the DJ plays “Look Up.” She’s indefatigable and you’re so easily flummoxed. Give in to the sweetness. Try not knowing what time it is or what’s next or who the best dancer is. It’s never you, and that’s okay. Just sway and savor the music. 

Love C.