Judgment
"It's judgment that defeats us." -Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now
This line from the film resonated with me intensely the first time I saw it many years ago. What it truly meant in the context of the film was lost on me at the time; I was far too young to appreciate what it contributed to the movie's narrative. With wiser eyes, I'll have to watch it again. But this quote stood alone as containing some important truth.
I recognize now why it stuck with me, and why I adopted it as a mantra for a time. Judgment is an easy way to insulate yourself, to stave off a sense of vulnerability. You might feel yourself feel annoyed, sad, happy, guilty, any number of genuine human emotions. It's very easy for us to judge ourselves for feeling them.
We all do this. We realize we're feeling sad about something, but perhaps, for some irrational reason, we believe that we shouldn't feel that way. You can dismiss the validity of feeling any emotion by comparing yourself to another person. Maybe it makes no sense to feel sad, maybe you feel guilty feeling sad, because you can find someone else in your life who has more reasons to feel sad. Maybe we feel happy, but we don't think we should feel happy because a friend of ours who spoke with earlier is having a bad day, and we want to shoulder their unhappiness. Some feeling enters your heart, and you find some reason to rationalize rejecting it as inappropriate, and you cut it off.
This is how we stifle our own humanity. Thus far, I haven't been able to avoid making this mistake; I've made it frequently. We do it to insulate ourselves. We do it to spare ourselves pain in the short-term, or out of a misplaced sense of stoicism...but the chickens always come home to roost in the end. When we feel healthy emotions, but choose to judge them and suppress them instead of letting them flow through us, then we're choosing to lie down in defeat.
This line from the film resonated with me intensely the first time I saw it many years ago. What it truly meant in the context of the film was lost on me at the time; I was far too young to appreciate what it contributed to the movie's narrative. With wiser eyes, I'll have to watch it again. But this quote stood alone as containing some important truth.
I recognize now why it stuck with me, and why I adopted it as a mantra for a time. Judgment is an easy way to insulate yourself, to stave off a sense of vulnerability. You might feel yourself feel annoyed, sad, happy, guilty, any number of genuine human emotions. It's very easy for us to judge ourselves for feeling them.
We all do this. We realize we're feeling sad about something, but perhaps, for some irrational reason, we believe that we shouldn't feel that way. You can dismiss the validity of feeling any emotion by comparing yourself to another person. Maybe it makes no sense to feel sad, maybe you feel guilty feeling sad, because you can find someone else in your life who has more reasons to feel sad. Maybe we feel happy, but we don't think we should feel happy because a friend of ours who spoke with earlier is having a bad day, and we want to shoulder their unhappiness. Some feeling enters your heart, and you find some reason to rationalize rejecting it as inappropriate, and you cut it off.
This is how we stifle our own humanity. Thus far, I haven't been able to avoid making this mistake; I've made it frequently. We do it to insulate ourselves. We do it to spare ourselves pain in the short-term, or out of a misplaced sense of stoicism...but the chickens always come home to roost in the end. When we feel healthy emotions, but choose to judge them and suppress them instead of letting them flow through us, then we're choosing to lie down in defeat.