Be Careful Before You Make a Judgment or Form an Opinion

Think twice before you settle on an opinion or decide what someone did, because you could easily be mistaken. Ask yourself a few things first. Do you actually have the full story? Are you rooting for one person over another, and if so, is that bending how you see the whole thing? Has it ever happened that you were sure about something and later discovered you had it backwards? There's an old line about not jumping to conclusions, and it exists for a reason.

A lot of what we conclude about other people ends up saying more about us than about them. That's a risk worth taking seriously. Do you really want to broadcast your own weak spots while thinking you're exposing someone else's? Consider the classic case of a cheating spouse who turns around and accuses their partner of cheating. The specifics of those accusations tend to be oddly detailed, almost a running description of what the accuser is up to themselves. Where else would all that knowledge come from?

Years ago a woman at church told me I wasn't handling my kids and that I was ruining the service. My husband wasn't there, and I had two toddlers and a baby with me. Offering a hand never crossed her mind. Instead she wanted me to know what a fine job she'd done raising hers, and that her children would never dream of acting up in church. It seems puzzling until you apply the question from above: what happened while she was raising her own children that left her so quick to notice and resent the behavior of mine?

The same pattern shows up in sloppy reporting. A story runs with only one side, conclusions get drawn before the facts land, and corrections almost never follow once the rest comes out. You don't want to operate that way. Passing along gossip or half-formed verdicts can wreck something that can't be repaired, and it can leave you, the one doing the telling, looking foolish. It can also put your own prejudices on display. Rose-colored glasses are a poor prescription for seeing clearly, and so are dark lenses, which really only belong on a bright day.

Wanting badly to help can also block the truth, sometimes with embarrassing results. Families, much like celebrities with publicists, often release only the version of a tragedy or a big change that they want people to see. Treat that early statement as the complete truth and you may end up with egg on your face. A huge lottery win, for instance, is frequently kept quiet so the winners aren't swarmed by people looking to take advantage. What other situations like that can you think of?

Don't let the pull of being in on the gossip push you into any of these traps. The better move is to hold off until you actually know what happened. Once you do, you can decide whether it's worth repeating or acting on at all. There are, naturally, emergencies that force a snap decision with no time to gather information. Get it wrong and it's embarrassing; miss the chance to help when seconds count and the cost can be far worse.

Did any of this give you something to chew on? I hope it did. What other moments come to mind where this kind of thing plays out?

Related