"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."
This quote is often attributed to Fredrich Nietzsche although it is not proven and there are others. George Carlin included, he used this saying in his book "Brain Droppings" (a potential resource for other quotes)
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears the beat of a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”
Henry David Thoreau
It takes really deep listening to hear our own music, our own personal drummer. When we are busy judging everyone we can't hear anything else, and our own music fades into a whisper that gets fainter and fainter with each judgement we make. When we judge others (and ourselves), we understand that we are being judged. Judging is "ubiquitous". We hear people judging (our parents, our society, our politicians, our history books, our teachers, our friends...) and it is addictive because it means we don't have to do anything other than call something bad or good and by merely doing that we belong to our tribe that sees right and wrong the same way. We don't have to think for ourselves and we learn to quell our curiousity and questions. The act of making a judgment is our action and this action becomes a habit and also spreads because people like to be part of a group and it is more acceptable to agree than to buck the norm. Judgement is like a novel virus, with its insidious contagion and spread, that has caused its own global pandemic that will keep us at war forever.
A judgement is not an opinion. It says something is right or wrong. It doesn't say "That's weird, I'm curious about why someone would do something like that?" or "wow, I don't understand but that must have taken a lot of courage" or "Hmmm, interesting dance! Here's an opportunity for me to learn something" or "That is cruel and innocent people are getting hurt how can we change the underlying system that is causing this?" or "What kind of pain and fear is someone dealing with to need to be a bully to survive?" or "this is scary, I am afraid of what's happening! There must be other people who feel like I do maybe if I speak someone will hear the music I am dancing to" or an infinite other possible ways to learn and do something about what we care about.
A judgement is an absolute shutdown of anything other than "black" or "white" and absolves us of responsibility of looking for the issue (of which we may be a part), absolves us from having empathy, from learning and expanding our outlook, from doing the work of soul searching to find what we really believe, and from doing any other hard thing that might challenge us to change, grow and face our fears.
Maybe we could stop judging and start listening and having conversations that allow us to learn and cooperatively innovate and create and build acceptance that what we don't understand and what we fear is our biggest opportunity to dance with life ...
Judging is distracting from real issues and is creating deeper fissures in our society and provides no answers because it allows no questions.
An Example from this week's news
"Justin Trudeau was wrong to join the protesters in a pandemic when he is supposed to be the example of staying out of crowds".
Yet if he did not join them what is the message from our Prime Minister and government about murder by the system designed to uphold our laws, about racism and about the complicity of silence in perpetuating racism and suppression of people because of the colour of their skin?
In my opinion, this would be a very difficult decision for someone to make. Knowing he was going to be judged no matter what he did.
Well what if he was wrong or what if he right?? How does this affect you and me??
We can and are contorting ourselves analyzing Mr. Trudeau's actions but basically we are stuck in our habit of judging and if we are looking for something to make a person wrong about we will find it, and if we are looking for something to make people right about we will find it...
And who are we to judge someone following their own drummer?
There are opinions about everything these days, a cacophony of conflicting messages. If we were watching the dances what would we see??
The Jerk: Jerky, contorting, twisting
The Serpent: Sinuous, slithering around, under and over
The Robot: Repetitious, limited movements
The Dreamer: Freeflowing and graceful, ephemeral. Like dust in the wind
The Dictator: Power hand pumping, elbow jabs and deep squat steps knocking over anything in its way
The Thinker:
The Empath:
The Lemur: Photo by Shannon Wild
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