judgement

Hrm. This is an essay topic. What is judgement? Is it bad? Is it good? Can it be healthy?

Is advice judgement? Are observations? Opinions?

I believe it's possible to offer advice and not judge. I believe it's possible to have an opinion and not judge. I believe that judgement comes in to play once you qualify a trait as "good" or "bad." That is to say, "he's not a good person." That's a judgement. Or, to believe that someone deserves something based on a previous action. Such as, "she deserves to die."

These are judgements.

It's weird when you give your advice or make an observation and suddenly people feel you're judging them. Not so. I love all of my friends. Even the the ones I don't talk to anymore. For those, I had to make a choice: my sanity, or our friendship. Sometimes, I chose the friendship, and my sanity disintegrated until I changed my decision. Doesn't mean I think the other party is a bad person. My old best friend, even. I don't speak to him for one reason alone: I can't trust him. It's really that simple. I will never again put myself into a position that may require him to have my back because I don't trust that he will. He's still a good person. I've even invited him out a few times to group activities, as he's invited me. But I just don't trust to have him around me. That's all.

In other news, I've been getting hints that a friend of mine feels I've judged him or her. Frankly, I'm confused by that, but slightly tickled by the irony that throughout their rantings and apparent disapproval of being judged, this person seemingly has no problem judging others.


I was speaking with Bus recently, and asked for his insight into a situation a friend of mine was in. He mentioned two gems I think are worth noting:

Gem 1: Just because a person is the most wonderful person in the world doesn't make him or her good relationship material. You could be a great person and not know how to handle an interpersonal relationship.

Gem 2: People try to defend their relationships when they hit rough patches by saying, "no one ever notices the good times, no one ever hears about the good times, everyone only hears the bad times" or some such variant. That is, when people defend their relationship or significant other by suggesting that the outside world has some skewed image of their honey, because they're only aware of the bad times since that's when people normally go to friends for advice. This is a situation that happens often, which is why a friend of mine couldn't stand Bus for a while, since coincidentally, whenever he called, there'd just been some "crisis" or misunderstanding and I was a ball of frustration. So he got the impression that Bus wasn't good enough for me, and he started voicing that opinion. Thing is, he was voicing it not in the constructive "you're too good for him, find someone else" way, but in the "I'm better for you than he is" kind of way, which never works on me.

I digress.

The Gem 2 that Bus was making is that relationships aren't defined by the good times. Rather, they're defined by the rough patches. How the individuals and the couple as a whole come together to work past their differences or personality, age, culture and religion (where applicable) and place the relationship first.

So don't hide behind the good stuff.

On a related, but different note, for crying out loud, don't read clips of stuff, especially when presented in the third person. Read the whole thing. Then make decisions and form opinions.

i think that's all for now.

people are weirding me out.