Judgement

While I was talking to a lady just now, I realised something and I want to share my thoughts with you.

I met this lady a fortnight ago in an event. During this event she was not responding to me appropriately. My automatic reaction was to judge her. "Rude, inconsiderate, self-absorbed..." and the list continues... I also know a little bit of her background and that strengthen my judgement and the belief about her.
So today I met her again... and I heard other people's opinion and experience about her when she just entered the space for less than a minute.

It is just so easy to fall into judgement mode as we do it everyday and it becomes an automatic for us without even need to do a lot of work in judging. So we become a judgement machine. Ah, even the statement sounds like a judging statement.

Now the story continues, before I sat down and start talking to her, I noticed I have a choice to make here. One is to continue my judgement that I set before hand and continue the conversation. Second is to start on a clean page. I chose the second. Not easy as I noticed the opinions and judgements wanted to interfere into my mind. There were a lot of effort that I put in just to remind myself and stay vigilant on being present and compassion.

The result, as I listen to her and getting to know more about her, I realised that how wrong I was about all my judgements and my assumptions on her. She was not rude, she is nice and pleasant. She is not self absorbed, she remembered our first encounter. She apologised for being rude to me. I was humbled by that experience and by being wrong about my judgement. I forgave myself and moved on with our conversation so that I would be able to enjoy and create a wonderful experience for both.

My lesson and thought for today

Being aware about our thoughts and actions, requires us to be present with our mind and our emotions. It is important to be vigilant with our intentions and create what we committed to create. Along the way, if we wonder off, stop before it is too far, forgive if that makes you feel good again, laugh about it if you can, make a new choice in that moment and create new experience again.