When is it OK to judge another person?

Grade 9 students in the Collective Voice program at Aden Bowman Collegiate share their lives and opinions through columns. Selected columns run each Monday in The Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

We are told not to judge someone by how they look and act, but we are also told to make good decisions about whom we associate with. Our positive role models are teaching us to be accepting, kind, and compassionate people. However, the question is: How do we know when it is OK to judge someone?

The definition of being judgmental is a negative word used to describe someone who rushes to conclusions without reason. Although judging is often perceived in seeing an error in someone, it can also be used in a positive way.

Judgment is seen as a negative act because it hurts others around you, but it does not have to. Judgment has both good and bad factors. These factors can lead you to make a good decision about any situations in life.

Some of the first things you notice in a person are positive, including their strong qualities and overall kindness. Those things can easily be overseen if you let the negatives shine through.

For your own well-being, judging peers or others by their actions is beneficial for picking your friends to be associated with. You are often connected with the people that you choose to associate with, so you have to be cautious about whom you decide to acquaint yourself with.

Everyone will get judged by how they look, and act and who they are with.

How we judge others is how we judge ourselves. When we seek change for ourselves, we sometimes feel we can look at change for the lives of others. As Rachel Wolchin once said “When someone judges you, it isn’t actually about you. It’s about them and their own insecurities and needs.”

A lot of the time our judgment about other people is in addition to our own self judgment.

This judgment is so ordinary and natural that we don’t even notice it.

You can never know for sure what motivates other people, but our reactions only have to do with ourselves. Various people may have a pre-conceived idea of a person by their religious symbols they have or religious clothing they wear.

Underneath whatever someone is wearing, or what any person looks like, we are all the same.

To find out the inner beauty of a person, you have to get past what they look like on the outside. In life, every day people get judged for being who they are. They get judged for having a pimple on their face or wearing the wrong kind of clothing brand.

While other people, who are not being themselves, by covering or fixing their imperfections do not get judged as harshly. To answer my initial question: “How do we know when it is OK to judge someone?”

My answer is the best time to judge someone is after you get to know them. After you find out their flaws and reasons for them.

At that point, it is OK for you to decide if this person is really the right person to be dedicating your time to.