I found a fabulous quote the other day that really hit home:
“Everybody’s a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its entire life believing that it is stupid.” (Albert Einstein)
Wow. That’s pretty powerful.
We all do it from time to time, too. You know, that dirty word called ‘judgment’.
I’ve been running into a lot of that this past week, too. For whatever set of reasons, I think the moon went out of kilter and some people suddenly decided they knew more than anyone else.
Doesn’t exactly give you the warm and fuzzies.
But taking that all-important step back to recognize that each of us is an individual with our own sets of strengths and weaknesses is the key to compassion. It helps us understand that every one of us is valuable in our own way, and not anything less — or more — than someone else.
Unfortunately, when people think they know it all, they make life more difficult than it needs to be — for themselves in particular. Now, some people on the receiving end of this kind of judgment are very good at ignoring (or laughing at) know-it-alls. And you know when the know-it-all surfaces because they’ll say something like “I already told you…” or “It’s a good thing I’m here to fix this…” or “How could you do such a thing? Weren’t you thinking…?”
So here’s my thought for the day. The next time you knee-jerk into saying those silly words, take a step back and recognize the other person’s gifts for what they are. Because, you know, they’re not your gifts. They belong to someone else. And that’s what makes each of us so damned special. Conversely, the next time you’re on the receiving end of such silly words, take a step back and recognize that the person saying them is trying to compensate for exaggerated shortcomings in their own mind. It has nothing to do with you.
We’re all unique. We all have something important to share. We’re all genius.
I’m now officially done with my soapboxing for the day.
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Terri Herman-Ponce 
What a lovely post. I think we all need to remember that sometimes. Judging others is a human impulse we all kind of have to face and try and combat as bad as we can – it’s so pointless and such an obvious defence mechanism.
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Thanks for stopping by, Laila. I agree. Getting past the judgment can be hard, but no one else sees the world quite like anyone else. We all have our own perceptions, and that can be easy to forget.
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Good morning, Terri,
I’d like to quote from Mark Twain here: When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
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Hehe. I think we’ve all been in that place. What a great quote.
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LOVE this quote. We all tend to forget this. I’m talking now about comparing yourself to others and deciding you’re coming up short. It’s not that so-and-so is better than you, they are just better than you at this. You may be better than them at that. I actually posted about this today, too. We authors tend to judge ourselves by our sales or our rankings, but that is not a true determination of your ability as a writer. Thanks for sharing, Terri!
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Oh, great minds think alike. Seems we’re on the same wavelength today!
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