Hi everyone, all of us are guilty of this. We are quick to judge people based on something they did without going a little deeper into why they did it. I got this message on one of my WhatsApp groups: A little girl is holding two apples. Her mother says “Can you give me one of the apples?”. The little girl takes a bite out of one apple and then the next. The mother is unsure how to react. Just then the little girl offers one of the apples to her mother and says “here, this is the sweeter one”.

There is also a story in Ramayan. Lord Ram is wandering through the forest. A woman named Shabri is a devotee. When she finds out that Lord Ram is coming towards her, she wants to give him some berries. She collects the berries and presents them to him. But the berries are half eaten. Seeing this, Lord Ram’s brother, Laxman is angry. He says “How dare you give Lord Ram half-eaten berries?” Shabri says “I ate them to make sure they were sweet. I threw away the sour berries”.

In my day to day life, I am quick to say something to my kids before sometimes finding out what they were thinking or why they did certain things. My children tell me to not judge them. And sometimes they do have a point.

Recently at work, I was having trouble with my wireless mouse. Sometimes even if I double-clicked, it would not open documents. Sometimes, even when I did not click it, it would close documents. The cursor was all over the place. So about 2-3 weeks ago, I requested our admin to order a new mouse. I figured, it would arrive in a day or so. But as I said, 2-3 weeks went by. I thought she forgot or perhaps she felt that this was not important. I was about to go back to her and ask her why it was taking such a long time, when she walked in with a new keyboard. She said just ordering the mouse would not have helped. If we did that, then the keyboard won’t work properly. She also apologized for the delay. Similarly, I had submitted my expense report for July in early August. It was end of August and I had still not got my reimbursement check. Again I thought that perhaps our admin was behind. She was on vacation and also she was studying for her part-time course. But one morning, my boss called me and said that he had signed the expense report, but forgot to return it to me. It had been sitting on his desk for a week or so.

All I can say is that I need to learn to delay judgement. Maybe you could too!