I live in a relatively small community. Yesterday something happened on one of our community facebook pages that really made me stop and reflect. 

During this time of the COVID virus pandemic, travel has been either strongly not recommended by our health authorities and governments, or even banned due to border closures. In recent weeks, as things have cautiously started to open up, there has been evidence of more people “from away” traveling IF we judge by the amount of “away” license plates on cars. As a result, many people have become angry and super judgmental on social media news or other posts about this. I’ve been noticing that there is a mix of comments: some angry, even mean, but most have been certainly judging people whose stories we have no idea about. I’ve been thinking that this has to do with an underlying fear of “outsiders” bringing the virus into our communities.

But yesterday something else happened to make me sit up and think:  someone from another country who owns a place in our community  (and who is well known and liked here) sold their home here and wanted to come back to move their household goods. They were denied entry at the border because it is considered “non-essential travel” at the moment.  In response to the person’s post about this, our community lit up the Facebook post with outraged and supportive comments: tagging the politicians who serve us at all levels wanting an exception to be  made for this individual, making strong, judgmental and mean comments about border guards, and just generally 

This was all done in support of this person that many in the community know. So, from a place of empathy and kindness as much as outrage. It also may have been done because in people’s minds this situation (selling a house and moving) SHOULD be an exception to a closed border. Except, except, except: these comments were coming from the same people who have been for the last weeks and months commenting harshly on seeing non-local license plates in our communities (not even thinking there may be similar, or other logical, valid, and stories needing empathy or simply being legitimately allowed explanations for those cars/plates being in our communities. 

I know there’s keyboard warriors out there who  seem to like to spew outrage and judgement all over facebook, but this was different: it was a case of people JUDGING. They judged someone they know and based on their story found a great deal of empathy (appropriate, as the situation was distressing for the individual)  but also outrage because an exception wasn’t made at the border. When first reading the individual’s post, I too felt empathy, I too saw the logic of their safety and quarantine plan, their huge effort at documenting the reasons for their across the border trip to show border guards. I got that. 

But as I scrolled the comments under the post, I started to wonder, and even laugh. Because it was judgmental. Yes, in favor of the person known in the community, but it was still a very strong judgement with a lot of implied assumptions. And it was a judgement that came with a level of trust: 1. they decided this person had a good enough reason to cross the closed-to-non-essential-travel border; 2. they decided that this person can be trusted to keep our community safe from the virus, that they are not infected and that they can be trusted to quarantine and physically distance themselves. 

So, while I completely understand all the commenters and their positions and I shared the empathy for this border crossing-denied person, all this made me first shake my head and almost laugh incredulously that these commenters weren’t seeing the hypocrisy between how they rush to judgment for anyone else who is around with a non-local license plate without even thinking or caring that those people too might have a “legit” story, even one that if we knew those people we would be equally compassionate to their plight and want to make exceptions for.  After weeks of complaining about border guards not doing their jobs and not being strict enough with the rules, they now were complaining about border guards being too harsh and not making an exception for what they saw as a legitimate reason to cross. 

Then, this made me think much more widely about judgement in general: how and why we do this. And I think we all do, sometimes. The big thought for me became this: when we KNOW someone, when we know their story and trust it and empathize with it, we don’t judge (or at least not as much), but when they are strangers….a lot of us don’t even take a beat to think others we don’t know might even HAVE a story that is worthy of our understanding at least, empathy at more, and taking supportive action of some kind at best. I DO understand all this, the process of it, the “human nature”-ness of it. 

But all this was another reminder to me……in my ongoing efforts to suspend judgement of another person or situation until I know their story, or to just not judge at all  (how about that as a concept?) if I am not going to be able to hear their story for whatever reasons. 

Sometimes we need to get reminders of things we are always working on. None of us are perfect. And I think judging others is something we all share. I think anyone who says they don’t judge others is not being fully honest.  That said, there are many of us who consciously work on being non-judgmental. And I think that’s where we need to go.  The more of us who actually work on it, because it is always going to be ongoing work, the better.  

It is a worthy goal to take a beat, look at our behaviors (I am soooo curious about whether any of the facebook commenters even had a second of insight about a bit of hypocrisy  in judging this person they knew differently from those whose stories they don’t have a clue about. I do get it. I think it’s natural to empathize with someone whose story we know, but a good first step in bettering ourselves through at least trying to judge strangers less, is to at least acknowledge the fact we have those different standards. It just might give us pause in judging the next person we don’t know. If we can acknowledge that the person we DO know has a good story, a good reason to cross a border when there is a border ban on non-essential travel, why can’t we also take the next step and acknowledge that some other people crossing the border just might have an equally good story, good reason.

Inspiration Spark!: Let’s just start with thinking about how we all might be complicit in doing this sometimes!

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