Reference to Context

“Hey you can be yourself, I won’t judge you” is something I hear a lot. I wonder what drives people into this perambulatory declaration. It is humanly impossible (barring a few enlightened souls) not to be prejudiced or partial.

Having an opinion is natural. Acting upon those views is what one can control.

I judge people too as they evaluate me silently. I judge them based on 5 features-

1.  Interaction with animals

How comfortable is a person around animals & birds or how comfortable are the animals around that person? To me, that says a lot about the natural vibes. I am not talking of drawing room activists who will make tall claims regarding environment, animal cruelty or carbon credits. I speak of the simplest form of communication between two living beings. The give and take. The non-verbal contact. You either have it or not.

2.  Deep Sleep

How easily or soundly a person can sleep when the body needs the sleep says a lot about the person. Inner dynamics owing to positive or negative thought processes guide the deep sleep. Of course medical conditions, travel and adverse phases in life do take their toll but I talk here about general sleep tendencies. I like people who can sleep deep and well. No wonder I loooooove cats ;)

3.  How one eats food

The pace, intensity and delight with which someone eats tells me a lot about how much people value what they already have. It is possible to polish off your favourite meal without looking at it with an ‘ah...so glad you are there on the plate’ feeling. I don’t mean the obsession or gastronomical excesses. I talk of pure joy & gratitude in one’s eyes when they see or have their meal. Many times one has to share it or leave it mid-way when duty calls but leaving it with a reassuring ‘brb’ is what makes me give people thumbs up.

4. Common Sense

To me common sense is the sum total of how you perceive everything. If you are not looking around, evaluating things and extending logic then all your empirical conclusions miss the pulse of the moment. I remember once we had a couple visiting us from Orissa. Their 10 year old daughter ‘Moon’ looked at everything from the ‘Zebra crossings’ to the big wide roads with a look of dazed amazement. We saw a wheelbarrow on the road with a lot of things on it. I looked at it and exclaimed, ‘how wonderful it would be if there was something like this to take us around too’. Moon looked at me and asked, “Why, don’t they have wheelchairs here in the hospitals?” I knew that very instant that she won’t have any problem at all, moving from her small town to bigger cities for higher studies as she is blessed with a keen perception, logic and common sense.

5. Room for more

Until one’s last breath there is always room of learning more. Since I was 12 or 13 yrs. old I have been wondering every few years ‘do I know everything about life?’....and every single time my answer has been, “Now I know all that there is to life” only to be disproved in there coming years. Every time I said to myself, “Now there isn’t much to learn about this subject”, contradictions have pranced around in mockery. So anyone who out rightly rejects or invalidates another person’s point of view without weighing it is someone I stay away from.

Morality, looks, expressions, language, adornments etc are accessories. If the above 5 are in order then these hardly matter, otherwise one uses these very accessories to substantiate one’s prejudices.

When we live our whole life as a game of ‘reference to context’, how is it possible not to be judgemental about someone, someplace or something?