Someone at a community event recently was banging on about a homeless bloke who sits near the servo. Anti-social behaviour, they said. Bringing the area down. You could hear the judgement sitting right on top of every word.

I nodded along for a second before I caught myself.

Because I don't know that man's day. Nobody in that conversation did. We don't know what happened to him, what he's carrying, what got him there. We just built a whole story off one glance and decided we were right about it.

I do this too. Unwillingly, mostly. Someone cuts me off in traffic and for half a second they're an idiot, a menace, a person with no regard for anyone else on the road — before I remember I have absolutely no idea why they were in a hurry. A mate snaps at me and my first read is that they're being short with me, before I find out later they hadn't slept, or the day had gone sideways before I even called.

We do this constantly. To strangers. To people we know. To ourselves, sometimes, if we're honest about the version of the story we tell about our own bad days.

Epictetus wrote something that's been sitting with me:

"It isn't the events themselves that disturb people, but only their judgement about them."

The event is inanimate. Neutral. It just is what it is. The homeless man exists, sitting where he's sitting. The car pulls in front of you. The mate replies short. None of that is inherently anything.

The disturbance — the anger, the judgement, the story about who that person must be — that's all built afterwards, in our own heads, and we build it fast. Faster than we notice we're doing it.

What actually changes if we don't build that story quite so quickly?

I don't think it means excusing everything. The person who did something genuinely wrong is still responsible for that. But most of the judgement I catch myself making isn't really about accountability. It's about a snap decision I've made about a stranger's entire character based on four seconds of information.

The bloke by the servo might have had the worst decade of his life. The driver might be rushing to a hospital. The mate might be barely holding it together. I don't know. That's the point. I've decided I know, and I don't.

A question I've been sitting with this week:

I've been trying to ask myself better questions rather than settle for quick answers. This week's question was this: when I judge someone in the space of a few seconds, what am I actually protecting myself from having to think about? And why do we do this?

I haven't landed anywhere solid with it yet. But I think it's worth asking.

I still do the thing. I still build the story too fast, decide too quickly, judge before I know anything real. Probably will again tomorrow.

But I'm noticing it more, which I think is most of the job.

Until next time,

Broden Johnson