by David D. Horowitz.
“You’re so judgmental,” the young woman vented into her cell phone to a male voice I barely heard, as she handed me my spinach fettuccini, neatly packed in a small recyclable plastic container. She took my credit card, processed the $6 payment, and handed the card back to me.
“Yes, you are,” she whined into the phone, and then the conversation apparently ended, for she snapped shut the phone’s halves and put it in her jacket pocket.
She was selling chilled, pre-packaged pasta at a table at one of Seattle’s large farmer’s markets, but she had to acknowledge her emotional wound. Looking pained, she asked me, “How do you not be judgmental?”
“Well,” I began, “I am not against all judgment. For me the question is: how can one make fair judgments? That entails patience, and patience emerges from recognizing two things: life is complex, and one can often be wrong. We can often misjudge, so delay judgment and be willing to revise and evolve.”
She looked like she appreciated the concern but was still lost in her hurt. Frowning, with forehead furrowed, she muttered, “Some people can be so judgmental.” Then, looking up at me: “Patience: how can you get that?”
“It’s not easy. Remember, life is complex, and it is easy to be wrong, and don’t be afraid to admit when you feel you have been wrong.” I had to buy tomatoes and cucumbers, and she had new customers approach her table, so our exchange ended with friendly nods.
Yes, I thought, beware of hasty judgment. Accrue evidence, continuously reevaluate, and cultivate long-term relationships that deepen understanding of others’ subtleties, fears, and hidden emotional spaces. Judgments—ethical, aesthetic, political—have their place, but always beware of hasty or one-sided judgments. And that includes towards oneself.
Indeed, fifteen Augusts earlier I recalled a friend who’d lost patience with her life, her career, and life itself. August, 2003: I visit my mother’s University District apartment for dinner. I had just stopped off at Bulldog News to buy a copy of that day’s Seattle Times. I chat with my mother, who prepares some soup, keeps it on “Low” on the old oven’s front burner, and then sits in her favorite chair.
I stand in the little uncarpeted, wood-floored living room and open the newspaper, inadvertently coming upon the obituary section. “Cynthia Doyon, radio host on KUOW” the headline read. What?! I read the article’s first few sentences. I am in shock. As if I had been pushed, I step backwards and sit down hard on my mother’s living room bed.
But I just saw Cindy a week ago in front of her apartment building! I was walking to a market to shop for food, and I saw her and stopped to chat. She told me everything was going great. She was all summertime evening grins and happiness. I had known Cindy for thirty-one years, as in 1972 we were both in Roger Merrick’s health class at Lincoln High School in Wallingford. She was 1973’s class co-valedictorian and went on to study at the University of Washington, which I also attended. We were never close, but I’d see her a few times every year on campus, and we’d exchange hellos and briefly chat about our respective doings. This once-or-twice-a-year conversation ritual continued well after we’d graduated. In latter years, she typically sat in front of one of the computer monitors on the ground floor of Suzzallo Library, researching some arcane detail about swing-era music. For Cindy had become a national radio celebrity of sorts: her show “The Swing Years” was syndicated nationally via NPR. Yes, she seemed purposeful and happy, and… now this.
“Ms. Doyon, who was 48, shot herself.” The article described the scene, near the UW’s Oceanography Building by the Lake Washington Ship Canal, running east-west through the middle of the city.
“Shot herself.” But, but I just saw her and…
The Times’s article described Cindy’s despondency over work and finances, and a year later The Seattle Weekly would feature an article more fully exploring Cindy’s career issues, debts, and cause for despair, but… who knew it was this bad? Pulling that trigger: the ultimate judgment.
But—life is complex, and one can easily be wrong. Bad days can deepen empathy, yield a great comedy routine or novel, precede a healthy break with a destructive habit or relationship or job. Bad days can help one, and others, enrich patience, empathy, humor, appreciation. Take the gun away from your head or heart, and put it down. Despair? Yes, it happens. But, joy, too, can come from a real place. I make no judgment about what Cindy did, and her end in no way diminishes her achievements. But I will continue to judge life worth the pain which is often a part of it—and I’ll always aim to keep from pulling judgment’s ultimate trigger.