A Lifetime of Judgment ~ Convicted Without a Trial
My undying gratitude to the Parole Board
I am strapped with the unusual ability to attract judgment.
The reason I find this unusual is because I easily draw attention from the direct and opposite energy from who I am and how I live.
Most of the time, I try not to analyze it. It’s hard to get a definitive answer from the Universe. I do revisit this life sentence when it happens. Which means every day.
It translates to daily blips on my radar that I have to turn my back on.
Imagine being pulled off the street, shoved into a courtroom with no awareness of what is happening. Your sentence is handed down and you never got to speak.
Anyone’s head would be spinning with confusion. An injustice, right?
And this is how I feel more often than I care to admit.
Once upon a time, my reaction was a headache induced by tears of frustration. And when the tears outweighed my laughter, I learned to turn my back on the hurt.
I don’t give these misguided personal judgments as much time as I used to for obvious reasons.
Because you won’t see me cry about it, or raise my fist to beat the air above my head, doesn’t mean I don’t feel the condemning weight and pain.
I simply diminished my outer reaction.
It will surely drive me insane if I keep trying to unravel the gnarled ball of injustice yarn that is tied around my neck.
People tell me how I feel.
People tell me what I think.
People tell me who I am.
People tell me who I was.
They are wrong.
Wrong in their assessment and wrong to do it.
I never return the favor.
I don’t judge, assume, or make a direct statement to, or about, someone that I have no right to say.
I have lived a lifetime of being hurt by words and judgments. And though their words don’t define me, I possess an empathetic, at times frail, spirit.
Words of inaccuracies weigh on me.
They are wrong.
Wrong in their assessment and wrong to do it.
I choose to live.
I choose to learn.
I evolve as a result.
I may not be the person I was yesterday.
Tomorrow I may awaken a little different, too.
I am okay with this.
I will never box you in, label you, or recklessly tag your thoughts and emotions as if I know better than you, and tell you exactly how you feel.
Everyone sees the snippets of my journey that I share. The clerk bagging my items at the grocery store would have an entirely different view of me than my grandson, neighbor, or best friend who holds many of my secrets.
No one but me knows my whole story.
People know only what has been shared with them.
I take umbrage. I set up boundaries. I’ve tried correcting people upon occurrence but somehow that made me argumentative.
Yet, the hits keep coming. They vary from little ankle biters to sniper attacks, and sometimes cannon blasts.
“I am never going to be less sensitive so that you feel better about being judgmental toward me.” ~Dan Pearce
The Parole Board
My saving grace, the people that keep me sane, don’t even know they are doing it.
My parole board changes daily. Faces and names can and do recur but there are always new additions.
I thank them.
It takes one kind word, a small gesture of caring, a smile or wave, to keep me believing in kindness. One bit of generosity of spirit easily erases 10 insensitive or thoughtless people and their judgments.
The Parole Board frees me.
I love them for that.
They have impeccable timing ~ and I aspire to mimic their sincerity and caring for all people each minute of each day.
My shackles of discontent, my heavy-hearted, suffocating confusion, slide off when they appear.
My thought process shifts from wallowing in over-analytical land, questioning why people feel the need to make determinations about me to then thanking God for balancing out our world with enough beautiful souls.
And, I am blessed because He puts them in my path.
“Life is too short to waste any amount of time on wondering what other people think about you. In the first place, if they had better things going on in their lives, they wouldn’t have the time to sit around and talk about you.
What’s important to me is not others’ opinions of me, but what’s important to me is my opinion of myself.” ~ C. JoyBell C.
Be kind. You never know more than what someone has revealed to you which is never enough to make a judgment on them.
Think before you speak. Words may be forgotten but the feelings you left them with will be long remembered.
It’s easy to be kind.
To My Parole Board:
Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
You are my salvation.
May you have new members every day.