Hard as Nails and Half as Sharp

More than occasionally I come across people I quickly decide are as hard as nails and half as sharp. These are people about whom I make a snap judgement based on a single encounter, maybe not even an encounter with me but an encounter I witness with someone else. That quick experience and snap judgement colors the way I perceive them. I consider them harsh, hard-hearted, dim-witted, neanderthals.

As I think of the way I judge those people, silently for the most part, I wonder how many of them—or how many others—judge me the same way. I’m sure I’ve been just as much of a horse’s ass, behaved just as poorly, exposed the rough edges more than I should have done.  So, surely, others who don’t know me or know very little about me have made the same characterizations about me.

One would think, then, a person would learn to withhold judgments.  That is a lesson worth learning.

“Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Among all the chaff in the “good” book, there is wheat. Hypocrisy is an illness of intellect.

About John Swinburn

"Love not what you are but what you may become."― Miguel de Cervantes
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