Tag: Judging

Why We Shouldn’t Always LOVE What We Are Good At

Image Credit: https://dorkdiaries.com

I have a confession to make: I could not read or write a full sentence until third grade. In other words, I was illiterate until nine years old… yeah, it was rough. I can still remember sitting in my living room dumbfounded by the complex letter my father was trying to explain. “W, it’s a double U. Two U’s… W”. God, I can’t imagine how torturous that must have been for him.

A personal anecdote, that is simply how my brain works. Nothing makes sense until it does, and only then do I feel that I fully understand it. When the English language clicked for me, I scored a hundred on the English exam. One hundred percent, not a single thing wrong. At the time it seemed like a glitch in the system, but in all honesty, I just figured out English. I just worked at it and eventually, it all came together. 

I wouldn’t say it was a miracle, but instead an extreme amount of work that eventually paid off. In those school years, before I understood English, I was working non-stop. If I wasn’t in the classroom, I was with my reading and writing special aid. When I wasn’t in school, I was doing extra practice with my parents. Nobody gave up on me, and therefore I didn’t give up on myself. I did what once felt impossible, and then did it rather well. 

Now do not get me wrong, I am not the greatest writer to ever live. I like to refer to myself as “good enough”. And honestly, I will take good enough, but I will not settle for it. I believe there is an important lesson to be taken from my childhood. One that I have had most of my life, and I wasn’t even aware of it. That is to not give up just because something does not come easy to you. Along with the other side of the lesson, which is to not devote all your interests into the things that do come easy to you.

I get it; in all honesty, I catch myself doing it too. Why waste your time doing something hard? Especially when it comes really easy to others and not yourself. In many ways that can feel embarrassing. Not many of us like to admit that we studied for thirty hours on a test, just to receive a B-. Alternatively, most of us would prefer to play football when we are twice the size of our peers, when those half-sized peers would probably prefer to play a board game. We like the things we are good at, arguably, we always have.

The problem with this is how it limits us. It narrows our skills and knowledge drastically. Limiting us from expanding outward with new interests and goals. In a way, I also believe it makes us quite arrogant. If you divot everything you know into the philosophy of hard science, then I feel it can be assumed that you are less likely to have your mind changed when someone comes in with a view outside of the hard sciences. Alternatively, I would assume that someone who takes in the philosophy of both hard and soft sciences (social science) would be more willing to hear differing views since they witness the clash of knowledge among fields on a daily basis. By limiting the things we care about and learn about, our perspective on knowledge and life is narrowed. I believe that it creates a bias that we have trouble escaping. 

Another issue I see with this norm is that just because something doesn’t come right away, doesn’t mean it will never come. Lucky for me, I had parents who were not going to let their child be illiterate their whole life. After years of work, we eventually got there and I stayed steady at the English average for most of my life. 

Yet that wasn’t enough for me. Eventually, I decided I wanted to be above average because I found an interest. I learned to write outside of the high school layout and began my blog. I was not good at the beginning and I would not say I am much better now, but I am doing it nonetheless. I find interest in it for what I could become if I continually do it, rather than what I am now. I feel this mindset has largely been lost because people assume that if it doesn’t come naturally, it will never come at all. Along with the assumption that if you’re not the best at it, nobody wants you to bother them with it.

Yet, there is a problem I can not ignore with the point I am trying to make. The issue is that people only want to see others do something if they are good at it. I would love to be a singer. I really would. Personally, I can not think of a better profession for myself. Except for the fact that I am tone deaf and everything within a mile radius has to cover its ears when I rock out in the shower. As much as I would love to be a singer, the rest of the world would not. 

This is why not everyone can become the next John Lennon. We cannot all become gods at the things we want to be, but we can become good. I have found that the optimal amount of time to work on a skill is 20 hours. Of course the more time the better, but as the link shows, the marginal benefits peak at twenty hours. In other words, working on a skill for twenty hours is the most amount you will improve with the least amount of time. 

Therefore, I encourage you to spend twenty hours on a skill or knowledge you never thought you could do. Something you avoided your whole life because you were never quite good enough at it. Personally, I started with the piano. I always wanted to learn but was never musically gifted. Nonetheless, I feel that I owe it to myself to at least learn Mary Had a Little Lamb. I understand it is natural to only do the things you strive in, but as this blog tends to point out, sometimes… it’s good to try the unnatural.

How About We Stop Judging

Judging is defined as forming an opinion, or drawing a conclusion, about someone or something with limited knowledge and using your own perspective on the matter.  When considering judgement in this way, I find that it happens a lot more than we realize. Essentially everything we consider and do is in this manner. We use both the knowledge we have and the bias we own to make our decisions and judgments on a situation.

Hence why for the most part I am okay with judging. It is something we are programmed to do, there is no denying that.  It is an evolutionary trait we have developed to prepare for quick decision making and necessary assessments of possible danger.  What I am not okay with is when we use this skill on other people and assume we know their situation. When we compare what they are going through to our own experiences, and assume we experienced the same thing but magically prevailed. Call me crazy, but I don’t believe in magic.

Here’s the one thing we tend to forget when thinking of others, they aren’t you. You, me, the guy in your tenth-grade math class, your crazy neighbor, your parents, and whoever else you can think of, all have one commonality.  That commonality is that we lack any absolute commonality with one another. Let me explain.

Subjectivity is something influenced by feelings, tastes, and opinions.  When thinking in this sense, our world is subjective because everything, and I mean everything, is subjective.   A simple example of this is shown when you hold your phone in your hand. As you pick up your phone, you cannot know for sure whether it is you raising the phone or if it is instead levitating up as your hand moves up.  One could argue that you “feel” the phone, but the same situation occurs.  Do you feel the phone in your hands, or does a sensation rush into your hand as you think you are holding the phone?  Any one of our senses could be rearranged in this manner, inconveniencing us into not know which reality is true.

Here’s a more concrete example: everything is subjective because there is a constant filter that we take the world in from. As in with every sense you have, there is a filter from that thing you are experiencing and whatever you define as yourself experiencing it. In between you and the thing you experience is the lens that transfers this information. And that lens, of course, is biased and subject to the emotions and expectations that you have of yourself and the world around you. Therefore, nothing is a direct intake without some type of internal influence when interpreting. 

It should be noted that although this concept is commonly accepted among modern philosophers, one should not get stuck on this way of thinking.  However, there is an important thing to notice with this realization. With the understanding of our world being subjective, comes the understanding that how we all interpret this world could be completely different depending on the person.  An example of this, that most of us have all heard, is that your blue could be my red, and vise versa. The colors that I have defined in my head could be entirely different than yours. This is idea, of individual realities, is reinforced with Cogito’s quote, “I think, therefore I am”.  

Since we are not in each other’s heads, it is impossible to tell how someone other than yourself experiences something.  We can relate with one another, but we can not truly know what it feels like to be that person. And that is why the one thing we all have in common leads to the very thing we all have uniquely.  We all live in a subjective world, but that subjective world makes us experience our unique thoughts and emotions.

This is why judging is so terrible.  When we judge we assume we know what it means to be that person and to be honest with you, there is no way we do.  Two people’s external surroundings could be identical and it still wouldn’t matter because their internal ones could be infinitely different.  

This is where I feel most of the issue in judgement is.  People compare themselves to others who turned out worse than them, yet grew up in the same environment.  They see these people and sometimes guiltily smile. Many of us only see as far as the external world and assume the rest is the same.  The thing is that it isn’t, and arguably if it was you would do the same exact thing. So unless you wanna disagree with the fact that we are the product of nature and nurture, we need to start considering both parts of people.

Therefore, we need to stop judging others.  We need to because we are in no position to.  We need to acknowledge the fact that someone addicted to cocaine and heroin, spending the next 15 years in the hole from dealing is no worse than you or me.  We all live in an uncertain world. One with no bearing on how anyone thinks other than ourselves. Let’s stop pretending like we are magically better than anyone else. We need to accept the fact that nobody, nobody, deserves to be judged.  And that nobody should have the liberty to use minimal, biased “facts” and throw them onto anyone but themselves.