Balancing 'judgement'

There was this young lady from India. Her actions seemed strange to many and a stereotypical affirmation to others. We get told to not judge but I could feel that air of sharp judgement, a conclusion reached instantly without a waver of hesitation. We judge when she is partaking on a Zoom classroom session on a filled up Sydney bus. We judge when she speaks, bobbling her head in a thick accent. We judge when she asks “does anyone here speak Punjabi?” We judge when she asks for help, and we judge her asking for help more than we judge ourselves for not helping. Perhaps it is the business and matrix of life that we get so pre-occupied in the cogs of ‘life’. We judge the smell that follows her around, that musky, spice-like smell. We judge the core and ‘human’ of the person based on surface level attributes. We judge when she jumps into a car and not instantly put the seat belt on, even when the car seat belt alarm is nagging with its beeps. What we don’t know is that this woman is working hard in a busy hospitality job, all in English. What we don’t know is that she has come to Sydney 10 days ago from India, found work straight away, paid $16900 for ONE semester at Uni with no family or friends here to fall back on. Yet we judge that she only ‘hangs out’ with ‘others of her kind’. We don’t see these struggles because we choose to practice a lack of humanity. If you’re reading this and you’re feeling emotions, then yes, you are human. But you may not be practicing ‘being a kind human’ as much as we can. Kindness, positivity and love is powerful. It is like a tidal wave that washes all your problems, negativity and anger away. When you feel like you can’t do anymore, that you are drowning in a sea of endless problems, one love, one bit of affection and affirmation will rejuvenate you to the point that is NOT quantifiable. Did you know that she is Punjabi and that they are a very small minority of students in Macquarie University? She is married, with a farmer husband who put every bit of money he could gather towards her education. Yes, it is human nature to judge. But judging is also a practice that one has enabled over time, just as much as your method of walking has been “practiced” over time. There’s always things to unlearn and to continuously work on.