The Opposite of Love

The opposite of Love is not Hatred, said a wise man. It is Judgement.

It took me a long time to get it. I used to judge people all the time. I always had an opinion about others. I always labeled them. More often than not, the labels were not favorable. When I didn't judge the person, I judged their actions: "This is appropriate, this is not", "This is right, this is not", "This is stupid", "This is wrong" and on and on it went...

When you look at the world like this, with a judging mindset, it all seems incredibly absurd. You are surrounded by people doing stupid things, everywhere you turn someone is making a mistake, doing something you don't agree with. And you conclude: "This country sucks!" or... "The world is full of crazy people!" or... "Is it really that hard to have a bit of common sense?".

Well, perhaps the world is not that crazy after all. Perhaps the lens you're using to watch it is broken...

It took many years and a whole lot of heartache for me to finally start reassessing the way I looked at people. I realized that by judging them I was actually telling myself - I am better than him, I am smarter, I am kinder, I am wiser... But was I, really? Was I not perhaps lying to myself? Was I not really judging them in order to distract myself from taking a good, hard look at my own flaws?

I have come to understand that we are all imperfect. And, fortunately, we are imperfect in different ways. What seems malevolence to me may simply be a defense mechanism to you. What seems arrogance to me may be your way of boosting your self-esteem. What seems rudeness to me may be your way of dealing with all that sadness in your heart.

Once I started trying to judge less, a few amazing things happened.

1. The less you judge, the less angry you get

Suddenly I stopped having so many reasons to get angry. Driving became less stressful because I stopped being so annoyed at all the "mistakes" other drivers seemed to make. Going to the supermarket was less of an ordeal because I stopped caring if the cashier was nice to me or not and started smiling at her anyway. And guess what? Cashiers also smile at me more often :).

2. Once you stop judging so much, others stop giving you as many reasons for complaint

This is perhaps the weirdest side-effect of my change in attitude. People simply started being nicer to me. I had fewer unpleasant incidents, that once triggered my judgements. I have no rational explanation for this, but people around me simply started improving their behavior, as if they were mirroring my inner change. There are fewer "difficult" participants in my workshops, I meet ever nicer shop-keepers whenever I go buy clothes and, for some reason, I simply find people around me to be much kinder than before.

3. You find the power to forgive

Of course not all is pink and sparkling in my world since I've become more tolerant. But even when I think I have reasons for passing judgement, I realize I find it ever easier to forgive.

I forgave the old lady who crossed the street unexpectedly in a forbidden area and made me violently hit the brakes on my car, giving me the hell of a scare; I forgave the guy who scratched my car in the parking at the shopping mall as a punishment for parking too close to his; I forgave the waiter who didn't smile even once and was annoyed when I asked for some extra ice in my lemonade. And it felt so good to forgive!

It really seems to me there is too much bad energy flowing all over the place, out of all the judgements we all pass around much too often, much too easily.

Unfortunately, all we do when we judge the "bad" actions of others is just pass some extra burdens to the people we're judging. We're not helping them improve by criticizing, by getting annoyed, by being aggressive. We're just showing them that the world is bad anyway, so they continue defending themselves by being rude, selfish, unkind, or whatever other labels we have placed upon them in the first place.

Being able to control my judgements gives me the liberating feeling of having some sort of super-power - the power to restore harmony where there is conflict, the power to bring good energy where there is bad. Actually it's nothing more than the power to change how I see the world and become more content with my life. 

What if we all stopped judging and started forgiving instead? What if we all started seeing the funny side of things instead of getting annoyed? What if we simply chose to accept others more for who they are? What if we chose to accept ourselves more for who WE are?

Perhaps we'd be just a little bit calmer, kinder, more loving. Perhaps we'd be just a little bit happier.

What do you think?