Taking Life with Chances

As I think about what I am supposed to learn right now on this journey, I keep coming back to gratitude, my past relationship with it, and how to better manage my ego.

But I’m also uncovering other areas where I could probably do a better job.

Judgment of others is one of them.

While I consider myself a pretty accepting person, and I really do allow people to just be, I will absolutely pass judgment on the person doing their grocery shopping in their PJs at 2pm.

I assume they’re lazy. Why couldn’t they just throw on yoga pants or sweats?

The person whose fingernails look like they haven’t been cleaned in months? I don’t want to touch anything they’ve touched.

I was getting a pedicure once when two women walked into the nail salon. One of them told the nail tech that her friend needed her fingernails and toenails trimmed.

The nail tech set up a chair next to me.

When she removed the woman’s shoes, it took every ounce of me not to make a sound or gag. Her toenails were extremely overgrown, and her fingernails looked much the same.

In my mind, this was a situation that required someone other than the neighborhood nail salon.

The woman was clearly embarrassed. She was crying.

The nail tech was kind, caring, and simply went to work.

The friend who had brought her in said she was going to leave and get an oil change and would come back later.

My first reaction was to be pissed at the friend.

Her friend was clearly uncomfortable and embarrassed. She should have stayed with her.

But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered, Would I have done the same thing?

For me, it would have been out of embarrassment. Not wanting to be seen with this person for fear of someone judging me.

How could you let this get this far?

Why are you bringing her to a nail salon and not a doctor?

I also found myself initially upset with the nail tech for even taking on the task. There were other customers there, and there was a smell as they filed down the woman’s fingernails and toenails.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience for anyone in the room.

And pedicures are supposed to be relaxing.

After I left, though, I started thinking about how incredibly kind they had been to this woman.

They didn’t charge her.

They told her she could come back anytime to have her nails trimmed so they wouldn’t get that bad again.

I was taken aback by the kindness of the salon and the way they showed up for this woman compared to how I initially did.

They saw someone who needed help.

I saw everything that made me uncomfortable.

And this isn’t the only place I catch myself doing it.

I judge the people on airplanes who jump up the second they’re able to, instead of waiting for each row to leave before the next.

I judge the woman who demands everything from the flight attendant without ever saying thank you, as though they’re there solely to cater to her needs.

I judge the people who listen to music, watch shows, or scroll through videos on their phones without headphones, apparently thinking the rest of us want to listen too.

These are seemingly small things.

But when I think about how critical I can be of other people over things that really don’t affect my life all that much, it forces me to think about the judgment I place on myself.

How harsh I can be.

And I often wonder if some of the judgment I place on others is actually projection, even when I don’t exhibit those same behaviors.

When I think about the nail salon, I think about being a teenager and introducing friends or boyfriends to my parents.

My mom has always been overweight, and I was embarrassed by her.

That is not an easy sentence to write, but it’s true.

I didn’t want to end up like her, and I worried that if my friends met her, they would assume that was what I was going to look like someday. I remember being embarrassed to be out with her because I felt like everyone was judging her.

And judging me by association.

Like probably half of my friends, I had teenage dreams of becoming a model. My mom set up an appointment for me with one of those modeling companies that were big in the ’90s.

We were sitting across from a woman talking about my goals when she made a comment about me needing to drop a few pounds.

Then she made a comment about my mom’s weight.

I immediately stopped the meeting.

I was protective of her while also being incredibly judgmental of her myself.

Apparently, I could think those things about my mom, but no one else was allowed to.

There was another time in my teens when a friend was complimenting me on how “thin” I was. Back then, thin was very much the goal. I’ve always been on the curvier side, and eventually I turned to drugs in part to stay thin.

I refused to end up like my mom.

My mom overheard my friend complimenting me and said something along the lines of, “Well, she’s flabby and needs to tighten up.”

I’m sure that didn’t help the body issues that were already there.

And apparently, some of this shit followed me.

When I see folks who are overweight, I still feel myself having some of the same disgust I had toward my mom.

Now that the world seems to be on GLP-1s, I catch myself judging that too.

Why are they taking the easy way out? Why aren’t they just dealing with the problem?

And that’s where this starts getting really uncomfortable.

Because I have spent a huge portion of my life trying not to become the thing I judged.

I judged my mom’s weight while being terrified of gaining weight myself.

I used drugs in part to stay thin.

I’ve struggled with my own relationship with food and my body.

And now I can look at another person trying to change their body and judge how they’re doing it.

So maybe this isn’t actually about the person in pajamas at the grocery store.

Or the person who stands up too quickly on an airplane.

Or the woman at the nail salon.

Maybe I’m starting to understand that some of the things I judge most harshly in other people are sitting a little closer to home than I would like to admit.