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I'm a bad judge of people


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I have come to realize that I am just a bad judge of people. A couple years ago when I registered as a den leader for my sons tiger den, I looked around and tried to size up the parents at a glance. We had started with six cubs. I looked at the other five parents and said to my self "Self, I would be surprised if parent 'A' is still here in a month but the others look like a go." Well parent 'A' is still with us, while 3 of the other 4 had quit by January of last year.

At round-up we picked up 4 new leaders. I looked over the new leaders and said to my self, "Self, I would be surprised if leader 'B' will be here by Christmas, but I really think leader 'C' is a lot like me and may be around for quite awhile." Well leader 'B' is going strong and has even picked up a kid, while leader C dropped at Thanksgiving.

 

New lesson to self, "SELF DON'T JUDGE OTHERS"

 

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Judge not, lest you be judged.

 

Judge with right judgement.

 

Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgement.

 

Now where have I heard these before? To judge or not to judge - that is the question.

 

 

 

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A friend once told me "Unfortunately for most of us humans we judge with our eyes (heart?) not with our ears (brain?)" a weird quote, I know, but we tend to 'disciminate' frequently by visual and physical 'cues' but we often fail to really 'listen' to the persons we are makeing judgements upon. We 'like' the appearance or way someone 'has about them' but we fail to really look deep and listen to the real message. One of my best friends in scouting is short and 'heavy' poorly educated and does not speak well and generally 'presents' himself ..er ah...poorly...

(like me he could put on a $1,000 designer suit and in ten minutes you would think it came off the rack from K-MART).

BUT THE MAN LOVES SCOUTING, and kids...he was my eldest sons DL and gave so much of himself that 6 of eight of his webelos got all activity pins and today...4 out of the eight have completed requirements for Eagle -just waiting on the paperwork...(could someone prod my son though!)

 

I have found that you have to really listen to 'adult leader prospects' to have even the smallest of clue and even then situations change..We had a dad come in years ago, who had been the Cub Master in his Pack and we KNEW he was gonna be our next SM...then his son dropped scouting...go figure! lesson? If any thing try not to judge (I know its fun!) just hope and lend a hand when ever possible!

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I like to think of myself as being very much a people person. My Dad was a really super person, I have never worked out why everybody liked him so much. Everyone thinks that their Dad is great, but I have never met anyone who didn't like him. He was very quite and softly spoken. He did become, thanks to hard work a fairly wealthy man. But he never showed it. He never ever bought a new car. Hated credit, I seen him buy houses for cash, not checks but cold cash. One reason I think people liked him so much was because they felt sorry for him. My Mother was very talkative, in fact she never stopped. She just talked and talked. She was wasn't as nice a person as my Dad. He was by far the kindest person I ever knew.

So some how I have or like to think I have inherited things from both of them.

I know that I am not as kind a person as he was. I do really try but he didn't have to try. Some people find it hard to believe that I really enjoy my own company. Give me a good book and a quite corner and I'm happy for hours.

I can and at times am expected to be the life and soul of the party. There are times when I find this very tiresome.

A few years before I became re-activated in Scouting. I became very aware that I was working too much. (Weeks on end of days that were 18 hour days) And I wasn't having much fun.I started too look for reasons why? The more I looked at what I was doing the more I found that I was in competition with my older brother. I wanted to beat him, be better than him. It was all really very dumb. This led me to start looking at Self Help books.

After a fair amount of reading I found out that taking care of me is the most important thing. This sounds very selfish. But it is so very true. I have to be aware of me, how I am feeling and if possible why I am feeling that way. For a while I really got into the whole "Inner Child" thing. A lot of the material dealt with "Healing The Inner Child". I think that I had a wonderful childhood and that there are no skeletons hidden away anywhere.So trying to fix something that wasn't broke seemed a bit silly.

Being aware of how I was feeling and taking ownership of my feelings, did help me become a much better listener. Expressing how I was feeling and not holding things in made me feel that I was a lot more honest.

It would be nice if we didn't judge others, but I know I do. At times I see the car, I see the clothes and these can mask the real person.

I have also been guilty of placing the wrong person in the wrong position/job and then when they fail I want to blame them and not myself. My biggest failing when it comes to judging others is that I allow history to get in the way. I may have attended a meeting and someone has had the audacity to disagree with the "Great me" and maybe not have had a sound reason or argument. When I meet them again or have to work with them, getting past that is hard for me.

We have a Lady in our Council, she was the worlds greatest authority on Cub Scouting, she was the R/T Commissioner in another District. Needless to say Her R/T Staff were the biggest, brightest and best. She was also the Camp Director for our resident Cub Scout Camp. I sat on the camping committee for a while as our District Cub Camping Chair. She hated Parent& Son weekends, her thinking was that they took the little guys away from resident camp. I thought that Parent& Son weekends were Cub Scouting at it's all time best!! We spent many meetings in total disagreement.

When I took on the task of Wood Badge Director, I asked her if she would be the Scribe. I had seen the material that she had put together for the R/Ts and I knew she was the best person for the job.

Everyone said I was nuts. Everyone said that I was asking for trouble. She did a wonderful job. I knew that she would. But she was just so nice, she was a living example of the Scout Oath and Law. We have become very close friends. She is a really nice person.

I very nearly lost out on having such a fine and wonderful friend, because I was allowing our past history to get in the way.

Someone up there was doing what he does best and I am truly grateful that He is keeping an eye out for me.

"Assumptions are the termites of relationships." ~Henry Winkler

Eamonn

 

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