On judgement

Today was a "bad day" for a plentitude of reasons:

1) I did not sleep well last night
2) I am not currently sleeping well right now
3) I did not finish what I would have ideally finished up at work to give me peace of mind about being out of the office for the next three days/preparing to fly in the next three hours
4) I got sucked into emotional blackmail for a short time
5) I felt insulted by someone I care about without them knowing it.

What a self-focused and ugly list.

Today was a good day, because I fought against my pessimism every step of the way. Even when 5) reared its not-so-beautiful head, I realized I was judging someone for judging another group of people who I thought might have included me (triple judgment!), so I Googled "judging someone for judging" and found this helpful little article that led me to this meaningful point:

Discernment is awareness and understanding without an emotional response. Exercising discernment feels very different from getting your buttons pushed. Judgments that cause emotional reactions are clues to help you find personal insight.

Hooray for personal insight, I suppose. But seriously, what more can I do but learn through my trials and keep my face to the sun? I have faith in this life, even when it seems to be playing a bit of a nasty joke on me, every once in while, very rarely.

Just writing all of that out makes me feel better. The person I was judging for judging, they're mostly good, as we all are. And though I had hoped to write an post about Hamas and Israel today, perhaps this bit of garbled randomness can be applied. It will have to do.