It’s amazing how you can speak about a topic so many times and still find new lessons in it. The humble supermarket shopping cart has given me food for thought so many times, even as I filled it up with food for my family.
This title might make you think I’m discussing the time I saw someone push a shopping cart in the general direction of the store instead of carefully putting it where it belonged, and then they backed into it themselves. I’m not. That may have been swift justice, but not the kind I’m talking about.
I was entering the supermarket one day and grabbed a shopping cart. As I pushed it, I realized that there was something amiss. It pulled very strongly to the left. To compensate, I had to keep a firm grip and exert more than a little force as I made my way through the store.
When it came time to move to the next aisle, I stopped pushing it to the right. Instead, I pushed it straight and its tendency to turn made a clean half-circle around the endcap and into the next aisle. And that’s when it hit me.
Anyone looking at me would not know how much I was struggling with keeping the cart straight. They couldn’t tell that there was something wrong with the cart simply by looking at it. They would assume that if the cart turned, it was me who was turning it. On the contrary, though, I was pushing against it.
It made me realize that often we see people doing things but have no idea what their nature or inclinations are. If they do things that we feel are off, we assume they chose to head in that direction instead of realizing that they are struggling against it. It can be something as mundane as coming late to davening or something much more dark and dire. The point is, just by looking at them, we might be quick to judge them at face value without knowing that this is a real battle for them.
Someone sent me a video that came from Eretz Yisrael. It showed a bunch of people on a bus. An elderly woman was standing while a slight girl of perhaps thirteen years old sat in a seat and didn’t offer it to the old woman. The woman commented to the camera that the girl “isn’t even looking at me!” She and other passengers (including some other adults who could have given up their seats instead of shaking their heads at the teenager who didn’t) went on to make comments about this generation and how kids have no respect. Then, the girl’s mother, who was sitting a few rows back, got up and told her daughter, “This is our stop,” and brought the girl her wheelchair. Suddenly all those who’d judged her so swiftly clearly felt ashamed. The message is the same: we don’t have enough information to make any judgments.
Now, you might say that the bus scenario was contrived, but it happens all the time. One day we were waiting for a minyan. I saw the tenth man walking down the block – very slowly – like he had all the time in the world. I admit I felt a bit annoyed that he was moving so slowly. “Doesn’t he realize people are waiting for him?!” That changed pretty quickly when I realized he had a cast on his foot. I’d jumped to a conclusion without knowing all the facts. Too swift a judgment.
It would be bad enough if we just felt shame for judging too harshly. However, it doesn’t end there. First of all, our judgments usually don’t stay in our minds. They have a tendency of leaking out of our mouths, making all kinds of messes. We share our misguided opinions with others and cause damage to people’s reputations or worse. And it doesn’t stop there.
You see, HaShem judges us the way we judge others. If we look at them with negativity, focusing on their flaws, He does the same to us. If we cause others to see people negatively, He will make people see us negatively. If we don’t forgive people their flaws, He will hold us accountable for ours too.
In short, we should not seek to pass judgment on others because in nearly every case we will not have all the information necessary to do so. We don’t see the invisible things pulling and pushing on them and driving their decisions.
On the contrary, we should remind ourselves of these unseen forces, of the challenges HaShem gives each of us, and tell ourselves that they’re doing the best they can. And if they’re not? That’s OK. We don’t need to judge. HaShem’s been doing it forever and He’s really good at it all by Himself.
Instead, let’s work on appreciating what people do instead of what they don’t, and cheering them on instead of berating them. If you’re in the market for a good life hack, that’s one of them.
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