Judge not lest ye be judged... and step in dog shit!

A friend of mine recently said, "I never judge. I'm not a judgmental person!" I thought to myself, Shit! I do! I am a judgmental person. 

I make judgments all the time. Just the other day I was bemoaning to my partner about the drivers in Sydney's Eastern suburbs, after yet another car quite happily pulled out in front of me and the driver drove off without so much as a wave. 

Bloody typical, I thought, and said angrily to my partner: "The more expensive the car these arseholes drive, the more arrogant they are!"

"He mightn't have seen you," my partner responded calmly.

"Oh, thank you, wise Zen master for awakening me to my deeply human faults," I snapped.

Now I wasn't only pissed off because some areshole had pulled out in front of me, but also because I had to begrudgingly concede my partner was right. These types of judgments are fruitless, unfounded and generally don't contribute to greater harmony and love in the world, something I do aspire to, though, admittedly, don't always achieve. 

Another kind of judgment I tend to indulge are those of the paranoid type. Take, for example, the young man who approached me the other day while I was out with my kids. My initial thoughts were: "Who are you? Some con man who thinks I'm a single mother they can bed then take for all she's got?"

I surprised even myself: how could such profound paranoiac thoughts erupt from my mind? It turned out he'd just arrived from Germany and was excited about being in Bondi for the first time. 

Today was another doozy. After years of wearing the ring I'd bought him from Mexico, my partner decided to take it off and wear a ring an ex-girlfriend had given him instead.

"Hmmm," I said. "That's telling!"

"Telling of what?" he asked. 

I was silent. I couldn't quite decide what it was telling of, but it was something, and something bad, I was sure of it. It's an ugly ring anyway, gold with a black stone. Ooops, there I go with my judgments again. (Sorry, honey, they're your fingers, you can wear what you want. Just don't be surprised if you're missing a finger one morning... ha, ha, joke! What's that? Not funny? You're right, probably not the best joke to make about a guitar player.) 

Yet, not all my judgments are this, well, unenlightened; I'd like to think that of the hundreds that pass through my mind each day, some of them are sound, and that mostly I use my better judgment to get through life. 

I haven't yet been hit by a bus or ended up in jail. Nor am I living on the streets, though if you look at the way old Jim has his place set up overlooking Bondi Beach, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I could probably make that work for myself if I had to. But with a family to support that's probably not such a good idea, so I use my better judgment to steer us through the streets of life as best I can. 

Every now and again there's the dog shit to navigate, but mostly I skirt around it with graceful ease, much like those unenlightened judgments that pop into my mind. I figure dog shit is inevitable in life, but it's easy to step around if you know what it is. And if I do happen to step in it, I can only hope that I have shoes on. The thought of it squishing up between my toes... well, let's not go there, shall we!