Dreaded Voices of Judgments

Listening to the dreaded voice of my self chatter made deciding on a title for this piece even daunting and doubtful. Self chatter does that, creates doubt.

The title came last, clearly indicative of my inability to narrow in on exactly what thoughts I want voiced.
I have yet to reconcile with myself as to what all my recent swirling thoughts that turn into self chatter mean, including but not limited to, how I am feeling about my recent binging on the game of “Judgmental Finger-Pointing”

True Confession.

The past couple of months I have been experiencing a bizarre dichotomy of feelings
Feeling both shame and pride at the same time, revolving around the same self-discovery.
I am proud that it took me far less time (couple months) to realize what I was dong rather than the years it took me to understand how toxic Finger Pointing is.

The flip side of this dichotomy is feeling shame that I was sitting in judgment of others in the first place. In the second place, and the worst place, I began to feel like I was participating in some kind of spectator’s side-line sport.
I wish I could say I realized that right away, and that I admitted to it just as fast. But truth be told this just this isn’t so. With my new tendency of zero tolerance, and even less patience I’d made a sport for myself by jumping straight into making judgmental reactions.
I know better.
I know that given time and emotional space before reacting is a healthy intelligence, yet instead I’d regressed to old ways by spending my time and energy as a spectator who judged others.

It elevated me when I was low.
Without taking responsibility and ownership for my thinking (self-chatter) and my behavior it becomes yet just another game of finger-pointing. It’s too easy to let my perceptions to a situation or person be extolled or tainted by someone else, To blame someone else for ME allowing any weight to be given to my perceptions is yet another style of finger-pointing. Blame.
True enough that it’s not feasible to expect we’ll never be influenced by our community. (unless we live in a physical and emotional bubble) Yet also just as true is it’s our personal choice and responsibility to what influences we adopt.

Somehow along the way I lost sight of this. When I choose to surround myself with anyone who can erode away any presence of my own voice it is I that is abandoning the voice that screams at my spirit: “giving power to judgements you have no first hand experience with is a form of spiritual suicide.”
A Spectator Participating Sport?
Engaging in the judging of our self and of others with constant and hypercriticisms as a normal routine has become an international sport of shooting people down. This “sport” has for many become an infectious source of entertainment. As a society we are even competitive when it comes to”Finger Pointing.”
I suggest that what we really are doing is deflecting the truth, Our own truth.

That which we find time and energy worthy to judge and point the finger at is more of a reflection of our own truths. The things we choose to make judgments about others says something significantly and brutally true about ourselfs….if we can take accountability for it.
Not everyone can, it’s not easy, and its frightening being that vulnerable with our self, let alone others. I thought a long time before deciding to admit to this out loud.

But It’s sabotaging of others and of ourselves when we give merit to our judgmental self-chatter.
Many people who live in misery and despair will mask their own perception of truth by deflecting away from what isn’t easy for them to own up to. Deflecting away from what is creating chaos impacting their lives. Somehow it makes us feel better to put others down by judging them and giving ourselves a sense of elevation, albeit certainly not any genuine kind of elevation.


Listening to our own voice is never as important as it is when being faced with someone who is determined to continue making judgments. It even might make us feel better. Temporally better. But at whose expense?
The quote, although an ancient cliché by todays standards; “that misery loves company” never has seemed more true and made more sense than it does today

We have become beings who are unwilling (unable?) to be honest and vulnerable with oneself by admitting that what we’re privately complaining about is in truth judgments (faults) that we seen in ourselves.
More often than not they are reflective of our own feelings about ourselves, and we’re looking for someone to keep us company in our darkness.
I’ve become hyper-aware of this in myself recently, so aware of it that I could no longer ignore the circumstances I was allowing myself to engage in. Judging in others while personally disowning the very same ugly things I was seeing in myself. It was far more comfortable and safe when facing things I’m not proud of to point them out in others instead.
Maybe its human nature to default to deflection.
Maybe most of us are not even aware of what we are doing because it’s been so ingrained in who we are. Didn’t our families for generation after generation sit around sharing meals and making judgments of one another and the community? To what end was the agenda?
This isn’t to say, but we haven’t begun to evolve.
Making changes in our behaviors that better serve us as a species isn’t inclusive of participating in the sport of “Finger Pointing.” Whatever our justifications may be.
Once the awareness is there and if I should continue forward with pointing the finger I am now on notice. Notice that I am devaluing someone by my judgments. By doing so I am also being fake and hypocritical. There’s nothing genuine in the judgment of others.
I even like less than the judgmental me the disingenuous fake me, or even whatever ugly it is I am struggling to embrace. I like even less the me who deflects away by making judgments of others.

After catching myself back sliding I am trying to remember “Stay in the light!
I sit amazed as I write this in hindsight just how quickly and easily I spiraled into the role of judge and jury, despite having the consciousness of what judgment of others really means about ME.
I can’t escape that I was in a hypercritical place where for some reason I was okay with “trying” to elevate how I felt about myself at the expense of judging another. Nor can I explain it with any rational reason.
I understand that roads are for taking us on journeys, not destinations. I readily admit that I am a perpetual student of life with still so much to learn and highways to travel.
I get that I am not always going to know the reasons, the whys and the how’s that make up the turns on life’s highways. I will even say that I accept that some events and people come into my life only to bring me lessons I’d not yet mastered. This was one of those lessons I hadn’t mastered, even when I thought I had.

I am trying.
Again.

ttaylor2015