Ventilation

Saturday, March 25, 2006

Gray matter

It's not that I believe the world is just or that life is fair. It's just that I have never been so personally offended.

To set the record straight, this person was on the list, so it’s not that I expected more from him.

And it’s not that I expected more for myself anyway, but I did expect more for the others, something better than that!

And the worst thing I could possibly have to write next, I now must confess. Tonight, over a bowl of Penne del Giardino, I was guilty of the same offense.

Had I been awake, I would have seen it coming. I always hate the things in others that remind me of myself. But this time, I did not realize it was me.

Elvis says he is judgmental, and he says it so easily that it is probably not true. Either he has never been, or maybe he was once, but now he knows how to manage it.

Every time we discuss it, I decide it is a struggle I don’t have to face because it is a problem I don’t have.

The word judgmental simply means ‘inclined to make judgments’. Who can say they are not judgmental, then?

But the connotation of the word is negative...‘inclined to make judgments, especially moral or personal ones’…and mostly about other people.

The sin of judgment is not putting yourself in a position over another or believing that you understand more than he does in a particular situation. Both can be true, and you can recognize it without sin.

Recognizing truth is not a sin.

Believing that you have earned or deserve a special place above someone else is sin.

Presuming that your ability to judge one particular matter applies to any other situation is also, probably, sin. There are people who have a special calling to judge, but that is not likely you or me, dear reader.

There is, as usual, a fine line.

And I, as usual, find myself on the wrong side.

These were the signs.

    1. I spoke of many people as if they were one, imposing the negative attributes of each individual onto every one of them.

    2. Assuming that people will always behave as they have behaved one time, I assigned fault based on one or two isolated events by one or two individuals in the past.

    3. And once I had made myself the cop and named them the robbers, I just carried on bad-mouthing them in general.

I have learned a little bit about the law in this past year, enough to know that it doesn’t have to be right or wrong; it just has to be arguable. As long as it’s arguable, and you have a good lawyer, you might wear the other side down and get by with it.

It’s arguable that closely knit groups do, in fact, share the same negative qualities. After all, stereotypes exist for a reason.

And it’s arguable that people really do behave as they always have, and that two make a pattern.

But thank goodness everything with God is black or white. Even a fine line is not gray.

And lest I let the moment pass, I’ll remind you that if you think something is gray, you just haven’t thought about it enough. That is, you haven’t gotten to the root of the matter yet.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Oops, I did it again

Is there one thing that you do, that you know you do, that you don't want to do, that you still do?

And do you sometimes stop doing it for a while and think it's gone?

But then does it creep back up on you, out of the blue, and all of a sudden you're doing it again?

And have you tried to control it, but putting attention on it just seems to make it happen more?

Well, I know exactly how you feel.