Photo credit: salodiensis / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Does it ever make sense to judge a book by its cover — literally or metaphorically? Tell us about a time you did, and whether that was a good decision or not.

In this age of the internet, we spend so much time interacting with people around the world in text whether it be on a phone, an email, or social media such as Facebook.  There is quite often no physical meeting of persons to gauge the depth and intent of our words, so we make assumptions or judgments about these persons based only on what they have typed and I am guilty of the same.

It especially gets tricky when we are trying to translate intent from one language to the other.  The person texting may think he is expressing sympathy towards his/her friend and the friend may perceive it as judgment or worse, ridicule, when that was never the intent.

So imagine my surprise, when I tried to relay sympathy to a friend in another country who had fallen upon misfortune and it was taken as being too inquisitive or ridicule.  It was not my intent at all.   I was taken as being judgmental and I felt I was also being judged unfairly.  It was a tangled mess to try to make the other person understand my intent and we have not spoken since, unfortunately.

We make judgments about people whom we have never physically met and never walked with them in their everyday life.  How can we possibly really know someone on such superficial levels?

The lesson to be learned here, I suppose, is to not make rash judgments and perhaps to sit back and gauge the conversation until one understands the situation before jumping in and offering another viewpoint.

Or better yet, keep one’s mouth shut.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/binding-judgment/