In a conversation with a friend (via email), I began with this rant. She'd been dealing with judgment from others about not yet having her high school diploma (she is working on her GED), and I got a little passionate about it. But I agree with every word that came from my fingers. I am extremely judgmental. It's one of my worst faults. And it makes you feel horrible, both when being judged and when judging others, and yet we do it anyway. I understand that as humans we are inherently flawed. We are constantly screwing things up. Some of us are always trying to do and be better, but we fail so often that we also often give up on trying to get better.
I read this dystopian teenage novel yesterday called Scored by Lauren McLaughlin. In it, almost every teenager is constantly being scored on what they do and say by an impartial, incredibly intelligent computer program. They do this by having these cameras, kind of like security cameras, all over the place. If you are a "highbie" with a score above 90, then you're given a full ride scholarship to any state school of your choice in your state. If you're a "lowbie," good luck getting a job as a laborer in a sewage plant. If you're somewhere in the middle, between about 60 and 89, you have some variety of career options, but none of them involve going to college unless you're one of the 1% who still have a lot of money or unless you win a scholarship that will cover all college costs. The story focuses around Imani, a "highbie" whose score suddenly drops because of her association with her best friend who throws away everything for an unscored boy. If you're unscored, you have even fewer options than the "lowbies." Overnight she goes from being a 94 to a 67. With only one month left in her senior year of high school, there is no way she can bring her score back up to even a 90. All of a sudden, this argumentative essay her history teacher assigned about the score becomes her only chance of going to college to study her passion, marine biology. Anyway, in one part of the book, she and another student get into this debate about the score, he fighting for it and she against it. They both come to the conclusion that it is a form of the caste system. Yes it is kind of a meritocracy, but it also focuses on the individual rather than on the caste as a whole. Because the "castes" are constantly changing with the changes in peoples scores, you focus on you as an individual and not on the flawed nature of the system. A nearly unbreakable system. My point to all of this is that the book was entirely about the judgment that these teenagers faced from someone even more powerful than their peers. Their peers didn't have any say over their future, but this impartial system? It had complete control over their future. It determined their future.
Judgment in our world does not work like that. It does not have to define our actions or our future. It only defines as much of us as we let it. If what other people think of us is the only thing that matters to us, then it will control everything we do--from the people we socialize with to the classes we take to the future we invest in, or don't invest in. But if you only acknowledge what people say and objectively decide if their opinions should impact your life, their judgment does not have to define you. If someone tells you that your outfit looks terrible, but you happen to like it, you don't have to take their opinion into account when you choose what to wear the next day.
My sister does that on a daily basis. It's pretty easy to choose clothes for her--if your first thought is "That looks awful!" then she'll probably love it. She loves to mix geometric patterns with this one floral scarf--they usually don't match. But to her it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks. If she likes it, then according to her it matches. They share a common thread (pun not intended).
It's entirely up to you what you let influence you.
