Kate+B’s+OpEd+Article

“Judgment Day”
 * //By Kate B.//**

Someone sighs as they slowly turn towards you with a puzzled and dismayed countenance, and they utter the all too familiar words “Life isn’t fair.” You shrug it off with one of those half-hearted chuckles and say to yourself, “well, what can you do.” Usually, when you hear this little adolescent cliché, it pertains to something that is relatively beyond control; in other words, inevitable or unreasonable. Fairness is usually measured loosely, and is typically applied to the unavoidable. For instance, your alarm clock spontaneously combusts while your asleep, so it fails to notify you to wake up. You leap out of bed, and get dressed furiously. Then someone cuts you off on your way to school, so you’re stuck at a red light for ten minutes and late for your first period. Your teacher is having an off day, and just so happens to see you walk in the door at 8:07 and decides they’d like to let loose some of their frustration, and hey, what a convenient victim. They scream at you for much longer than necessary, you try to refute and say it wasn’t your fault, but they don’t really care, and they send you to the office to get a late slip. On the way there, you run into a girl carrying a plate of spaghetti and it gets all over your pristine white shirt that you just paid way overprice for at the concert the night before. Well, something along those lines. You hadn’t really done anything to deserve it, but as fate would have it, you suffered anyway. Lucky you. It wasn’t fair but it happened.

We complain that life isn’t fair, referring to something that happened unexpectedly and wasn’t at all desired. But the same idea can be applied to something that is so much in our own control and can be avoided, that it’s ridiculous. Yet, it’s still just as unfair. No, not unfair. Wrong. Its wrong on so many levels- judging another person based on false information, physical appearance, stereotypes, first impressions, etc. No one deserves to be judged, yet we all do it…constantly. I don’t know if we mean to or not, but we always are silently (or not so silently) watching and criticizing what other people do. Nor do I know why, maybe to keep things interesting? Make ourselves feel better? I have no idea.

We can never possibly understand what is really going on with someone else. We can’t read their mind, only their facebook page, and that doesn’t really tell us much. But things like that tell us just enough that we can distort reality in so many ways and believe whatever we want to believe about them. It usually depends on the source. If a friend tells you that the girl in your math class likes to sleep around, are you obligated to believe them? On a certain level, yes. As a friend, you feel like you should trust your friend’s judgment whether it’s fair and supported or not. Just because it happens, doesn’t make it right. These things can have such immense consequences on any given person. Think about it, why do so many of us try so hard to look a certain way? To give off the impression to those who don’t know us that we //**are**// a certain way. Those who do truly know us, however, don’t usually care. Regardless, the fact is that the first thing we notice about a person is physical appearance, and at the moment you lay eyes on someone new, you make a quiet jurisdiction as to what this person is all about, and file it away in your mind for later use. The better of us will leave it at that, and won’t make any other judgments about them until they actually get to know them. However, most of us unfortunately do not fall in this category. We take first impressions, along with what others say, and certain half-truth experiences that only show us the partial story, and we use those elements to formulate an opinion on someone else. This all takes place before even properly meeting them.

This kind of judgment based off ignorance really holds us back from accepting one another, and being generally happy. As an individual who truly cares far too much about what others think of her, I would be devastated to learn that others have judged/will judge me based on something that is only partially true, or entirely false. Looks can be deceiving, as well as what is heard. Superfluous gossip and the grapevine are powerful weapons used against one another, and can never lead to anything beneficial. They can even be downright harmful. A friend of mine’s younger sister, A, suffered tragically in her junior high years because of this common phenomenon. In my opinion, and I personally know A now, and find her to be beautiful, smart, funny, sweet, and all around a genuinely good person. In middle school however, she had become depressed way beyond her maturity level, and at 14, had already made an attempt to take her own life. A had suffered emotionally, at the hands of another girl, who was most likely jealous of her. This girl had judged her, thinking she many profane things that she clearly was not. They were never friends, in fact they barely knew each other, but this girl despised A and literally ruined her life for several years, and probably left emotional scars that will never heal. These occurrences are far too common. No one deserves to be treated like that, especially someone like A. It never seizes to appall me, but the miserable part is that I am not abstained from the practice entirely. I try to, but sometimes it just happens, and I am so sorry for that.

By no means am I cynical by nature, and pointing out the flaws in humanity is not my forte. Nonetheless, I am deeply disturbed by the power we have over each other, just by making simple judgments. They are made through countless stereotypes, bias, appearance, and word of mouth, and it all goes on underneath the surface, and you haven’t got a clue when it’s all about you.

In 1999, the Columbine travesty had taken place, and why? Because of this very concept. Two tortured teens open fired on their classmates, because they had been suffering for so long, and could no longer live with it. They were ridiculed everyday for their strange appearances, and beliefs. They weren’t seen as normal by their fellow high school students, and their lives had reached a point so low and so devastating at their hands and their words. Words and judgment alone had the power to isolate these two boys from everyone else, so that they felt forced to take such drastic and extreme measures. Can’t you see, just the immense power we have over each other? You can never truly understand someone else, especially from a distance, so what right do any of us have to pass judgment on others?

None.

I don’t care if you dislike a certain book, or musical genre, or your wife, or a perfect stranger, but you better have a substantial and informed reason to do so. If you do not, then the other should receive the benefit of the doubt, because nothing and no one should ever deserve the punishment of being judged unfairly. We all hold the power to change this injustice individually, all we have to do is try to make an effort to see the other person’s point of view, because there could be countless explanations. Only after that is achieved, after we’ve walked miles in their shoes, can we honestly put a stop to this devastating cycle.

It has to stop.media type="file" key="kateb-muckraker-0910.mp3"