Judging without judging

On the messiness of making different choices from each other (and talking about the reasons why)

Today I’m struggling with the reality that sometimes when I say “I made a different choice” other people hear “so I think yours is stupid”.

The messiness makes me think, vaguely, of Lauren Oyler’s essay collection No Judgment. Oyler talks about how “no judgment” is a silly thing to say when the truth is we judge each other all the time. It’s like adding “no offense” to not-exactly diffuse an inarguably offensive comment.

But do we really judge each other all the time?

I guess by the Oxford Languages definition, yes. We can’t help but “form an opinion or conclusion about” everyone and everything we interact with. But those opinions aren’t always negative. While I can’t help but judge you, I am very rarely judging you. (Translation: While I can’t help but compile an impression of who you are and how you live, I am very rarely thinking “this person sucks”.)

The “my choices don’t have to be the same as yours” idea first started coming up for me in the dog training world. Scout is a sensitive dog, so I approached her training—and still approach our daily life—differently than many friends with more exuberant companions. On occasion I still find myself in heated discussions (particularly when it comes to methodology nuances like the ethics of punishment… and whether we’re referring to “punishment” in an operant conditioning context or a more colloquial way, which is a whole other essay) but most of the time I think I’ve got the nerdy open-minded dog owner thing down. If you are happy, and your dog is happy, and your choices don’t hurt anyone else? Heck yes! (Listen: You can hear me cheering for you all the way from south Florida.) And it takes a lot to make me second guess the way Scout and I live now, while a few years ago it took literally nothing.