I don’t know about you, but I know the exact moment I transition from healthy and objective assessment of other people and circumstances – all necessary skills for daily life and survival – into condemnation and judgment.
It’s a flash of inner-reactivity and my prejudices assault me and can result in the loss of an opportunity to grow, to love, to embrace. The opportunity is displaced by drive to wipe the dust off my feet and flee.
It is in these moments, if I catch myself, if I stop, watch what I am doing, give myself time to reflect on my experience, I am made newly aware of how incredibly complicated and wonderfully made we are and how dangerous we can be. In a nanosecond an innocent bystander, someone I have never seen or met, can be inflicted with my prejudices, my unresolved baggage, most of it continents removed from my random victim with origins uniquely within me, decades in the making, before my target was born.
In a split second, if I am not careful, I am unloading my dissatisfaction about whomever and whatever from years ago onto someone I don’t know.
“Grow up,” I tell myself, “and Go, stone no more.”
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