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On Judgment

Tolerance and forbearance aren't great skills of mine.

I can feel murderous rage on the train from NYC. I felt it yesterday, just because the woman across from me was typing too loudly on her laptop. Her meaty paws clacking, clacking, clacking away. Assaulting the keys. Typing whatever inane thoughts she had into her "Google Slides," because those thoughts simply could not wait.

Once, I sat with my shrink in a movie theater. My shrink has exquisite Old World manners. We sat, and the guy in front of us flashed his iPhone. Time for texting! My blood pressure soared. Surely, there was no solution--no option but to simmer in rage for the duration of the two-hour Italian film we had signed on for. But my shrink approached this stranger and gave a beautiful speech. He made it seem as if *he himself* were the problem. As if, in a just world, everyone would be allowed to text all the time, in all contexts--funerals, weddings, UN summits. As if people requiring full-dark in a movie theater were the people who had really lost their minds.

My shrink gave this speech--and the stranger listened, and apologized, and graciously pocketed his cell phone. I felt as if I had landed on an alien planet.

So chaotic is my inner life, I really can't stand aberrant behavior from others. This is the definition of being a control freak. Other teachers look upon their small students and find the chatter soothing: The chatter is like the pleasant babbling of a tiny brook. I can't function that way. If I have arbitrarily declared that there will be silence, and there isn't silence? My pulse shoots through the roof.

I've noticed that the people most inclined to function well, socially, are the people who are tolerant with themselves. They're the people who can shrug and laugh and say, "I'm wrong! Well, it's certainly not the first time I'm in error." Or: "I'm most definitely a fallible human being." They're the people who can say: "I'm sorry, I screwed up; I should have thought that through more carefully." They can say this even *when they are truly not in the wrong*...because their egos are secure, and it costs them very little to be seen as human, flawed, prone to making mistakes.

There's that cliche about your Jungian shadow: It's the people who are most candid about their imperfection who are actually the soundest people, the people with their feet planted most firmly on the ground. It's the most guarded, most defensive people whom you need to worry about.

And there's a (deliberately ironic) thought from Anne Lamott, as well: Never go out if you're imperfect. If you insist on going out, in your sublunary state, then at least have the grace to feel deeply ashamed and chagrined AT ALL TIMES.

Well, I know myself, more and more. I know I'm rigid and judgmental; I know my rigidity leads to nervousness and then to error; and I know that my inability to admit to error then causes me to reach for defensiveness (and further embarrassment).

Perhaps things will change. Perhaps not. At least I can feel some fondness toward my own wacky self!

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