Lessons to my Child: Between a Rock and a Judgment

 

This picture is floating around the internet and seems to be centered around relationship building and understanding, but I don’t see it that way. To me this is a lesson on basic human understanding, judgment, empathy and compassion.

 Similar to how others have interpreted what is happening, when you first look at the picture you see a man trying to save a woman (relationship unknown). But that’s only the first layer, the first circumstance. When you look at it further, there seems to be a rock crushing the man at the top, and a hidden snake biting the woman’s arm inside the cliff. Now you might think, okay, so what does this mean?

Well, what if the woman is thinking, as she barely struggles to hold on, finger by finger, “why isn’t the man trying harder to save me? He should be strong and be able to lift me up, why is he only putting half the effort in??” But what the woman can’t see from her angle is that the man is being crushed by a rock on his back. But alas, he’s still trying to save her despite his obvious pain and suffering. He is doing his absolute best, and meanwhile the woman thinks he isn’t doing enough.  And the man might be thinking, “I am trying so hard to lift her up but she’s barely even trying to help herself!! How can I be expected to do all the work!?” But what he doesn’t see is the woman is getting bitten by the snake that’s crawling out of the cliff, and she’s afraid to use the ledge to help herself climb up because of the snake.

 Now this may be a strange example. I can't think of any situation where this might actually happen, but you never know! But that’s not the point, it’s the basic lesson of human empathy behind it.

We are ALL going through something, most of us are struggling with our demons, grievances, memories, fears, worries, every day. Maybe a physiologic disease or a psychiatric disease, emotional struggles, family struggles, marital struggles, losses, anything, what it "is" is different for everyone. One persons “something” might feel a lot worse to one person vs another, but that doesn’t matter. That person is still going through a difficult time. That person is still being crushed by a rock while someone else judges them for why they aren’t doing more.

 I post this on my motherhood blog because this is a lesson I not only want to share, but one I want my daughter to grow up knowing. It is basic human nature to wonder about other people, and often times our thought processes make us jump to conclusions and judgments that either aren’t true or we aren’t seeing the whole picture, thus we can never make an accurate assumption about what that person is going through. Even the people we love and know best, we can always jump to conclusions too fast.

 I want my daughter to grow up to always think, if she for a second has an impulse to judge someone for their actions, behaviors, looks, life-choices, clothing, etc, I want her to always stop and think, what could this person be going through? What else may be happening to explain this action I am witnessing? We can’t always help. Often times help isn’t wanted, we are unable, or its purely just not our business. But what we can do is try to understand. To think what rock might be crushing this person that is behaving this way? What snake is attacking this person behaving that way?

 

I try and practice this train of thought every day. Multiple times a day. And its hard! As someone speeds past me on the right hand lane when the rest of us hundred cars are in traffic trying to merge because a lane is closing, instead of letting my blood boil, I try to think of why that man might be in such a rush? Maybe his own daughter is very ill in the backseat, or his wife is in labor, or his mother is dying right now in the hospital, I don't know. I have to believe these things because I choose to believe good versus bad when I literally have no power to know what the correct reason was.

 

It’s easier for our brains to put us on the defense, to automatically make us think we are of course, right, and our opinion is always right that we make of someone. I’ve heard it said that we decide what we make lifelong impressions on people within the first 7 seconds of meeting them. Our instinct goes back to cave men fighting threats. The cave man sees a wolf in the wild and immediately analyzes the situation, decides this wolf is trouble and up to no good, and the man goes on the defense to fight the wolf or flee. But maybe the wolf just lost her baby wolf (cub?), or just got separated from its parents, or anything. When we come across behavior, actions or characteristics from other people that WE think are untrustworthy, bad, annoying, poor-parenting, poor life choices, horrible, devilish, etc, we immediately go on the defense. Our first thought on habit is to judge (this man is not strong and doesn’t care about helping me survive this cliff), and then we justify it with our own thoughts (He should be working harder to save me and that’s what I would do if I were him), and we decide that we are right and they are wrong. But we need to change that instinct habit, or at lease instead of letting the thought process continue- we halt it in its track and after we have that “judge mental” thought, we then think of what pressures that person is under? What rocks might be crushing this man? What snake is biting this woman?

 

 

PS I’d like to give credit to the original drawing, but can’t find the source, if anyone knows, let me know!