Do you judge too quickly?

I was on the bus heading home last night when i overheard the conversation behind me. It was a young couple and they sounded like they were having an argument. I was adamant about not being distracted and continued reading my Flipboard articles. Then I heard more and more agitated words, the girl was definitely upset and giving the guy a hard time. Something about letting her wait for a long time, and then pushing the blame to her etc.

At this point of time, the natural tendencies are to assume the girl is being unreasonable and that she’s just kicking up a fuss. I stopped myself just as I was getting to that. True that I’ve probably been on the wrong end of such arguments before but that doesn’t mean that every case is similar, so I shouldn’t be too quick to jump to any conclusions, besides I hardly know the full story. Perhaps it was the guy who was really in the wrong this time? Perhaps it was really painful and hurtful what he said? Who are we to judge since we don’t know? I looked out the window to see the streets whizzing by, then turned my head back down and swiped across for the next article.

If I hadn’t taken some extra time to think about it, I would have clicked over to my Facebook and shared about the girl being an unreasonable brat, but was that the truth? Well, I guess I’ll never know since I didn’t hear more of the conversation. What can be taken away from this scenario is that we tend to judge situations with a personal bias. I was sick and tired of ridiculous girls making a fuss of everything, and thus gravitated towards viewing the guy as being a victim. If I was a girl who had been hurt before, then I’d probably be swearing at the guy in the back of my mind. What we don’t see is the real story and what actually conspired between the both parties. We don’t understand the stage of the relationship and we don’t know what was actually said or done.

In this day and age, it is so easy to be a keyboard warrior, so easy to shame someone on the internet. We read about something that people say and we judge them. A recent Thai Advert actually hit the nail on the head - where does Social Media justice draw the line? How can we actually be sure we are judging correctly? It’s indeed a fine line and if you have not watch the Thai advert, check it out here https://youtu.be/MxxKUikZ7YY

The bus swung around to MacRitchie Reservoir and slowed. The guy got up from his seat and walked to the door and waited for the bus to stop. He was dressed in a smart casual shirt and jeans, he looked back towards my direction where the girl was seated. I wondered how he felt and tried in vain to read the facial expressions. The girl made no move to join him yet and it almost looked as if he was going to storm off the bus by himself. Thankfully as the bus inched into the bay, the girl stood and got to the exit. I watched as they alighted and started talking at the bus stop.

We all learn through mistakes, but sometimes I really wish that people would treasure people they have by their side - there are some mistakes that just aren’t worth the price.