I often think about how quickly we judge people.
Someone does something we don’t like, and we immediately decide:
“He is wrong.”
“She is a bad person.”
“I would never do something like that.”
But is life really that simple?
Is everything always 100% right or 100% wrong?
I don’t think so.
I feel that many things in life are somewhere in between. Sometimes, whether we consider someone right or wrong depends on the situation, the person’s intention, our relationship with them, and even our own way of thinking.
The same person can look completely different to different people
Imagine two people who have almost the same way of thinking.
They understand each other’s humour. Their opinions are similar. Their personalities match. They enjoy the same things and have similar values.
Now imagine one of them does something that another person considers wrong.
The person who is very close to him might say:
“I know him. There must be a reason behind it.”
But someone who doesn’t know him might immediately say:
“That’s a terrible thing to do.”
The action is the same.
But the judgment is different.
Why?
Because the person judging it is different.
Maybe the close friend understands the person’s situation. Maybe they know what happened before that decision. Maybe they understand his intention.
The other person only sees the action.
And sometimes, that’s enough to completely change our opinion.
We don’t judge everyone equally
I think we all do this, even if we don’t realize it.
Suppose someone we really like makes a mistake.
We might say:
“It’s okay. He didn’t mean it.”
But if someone we already dislike makes exactly the same mistake, we might say:
“See? This is exactly what kind of person he is.”
The action hasn’t changed.
Our feelings toward the person have changed our interpretation of the action.
This makes me wonder:
Are we always judging the action?
Or are we sometimes judging the person first and then using their action as evidence?
Context can change everything
There are also situations where something that looks wrong from the outside may have a completely different explanation when we know the full story.
Someone refuses to help another person.
From the outside, it may look selfish.
But perhaps they have already helped that person many times.
Someone leaves a relationship.
It may look cruel.
But perhaps they tried for years to make it work.
Someone says something harsh.
It may sound rude.
But perhaps they were reacting to something that happened before.
I’m not saying every wrong action should be justified.
Some things are clearly harmful, and understanding the situation doesn’t automatically make them right.
But before deciding what kind of person someone is, perhaps we should sometimes ask:
“Do I actually know the whole story?”
Being similar to someone can make us more forgiving
This is the part I find especially interesting.
When someone thinks like us, understands us and shares our values, we naturally give them more space.
We understand their behaviour more easily because we can imagine ourselves making the same decision.
But when someone’s personality or values are completely different from ours, their behaviour can feel strange or even wrong.
Maybe that’s why we sometimes say:
“I don’t understand how someone can think like that.”
Of course you don’t.
They are looking at life through a different window.
And they may be looking at you in exactly the same way.
So is there no right or wrong?
I don’t think that’s the conclusion.
There are certainly things that are wrong regardless of who does them.
But when it comes to people, relationships, intentions and everyday decisions, I don’t think everything can always be placed into two boxes:
RIGHT
WRONG
Sometimes there is context.
Sometimes there is intention.
Sometimes there is misunderstanding.
Sometimes there are two people who both genuinely believe they are right.
And sometimes, neither person is completely right.
Maybe we should judge less quickly
I’ve started thinking that instead of immediately asking:
“Who is right?”
maybe we should sometimes ask:
“Why does this person think they are right?”
That doesn’t mean we have to agree with them.
Understanding someone doesn’t mean accepting everything they do.
It simply means trying to see the situation from another side before reaching a conclusion.
Because the person we think is completely wrong today might have a story we don’t know.
And the person we think is completely right today might look very different if we knew everything too.
Maybe life isn’t always black and white.
Maybe sometimes the same person can be right for some people and wrong for others, simply because people have different values, expectations and ways of seeing the world.
And perhaps that’s one of the reasons human relationships are so complicated.
This is how I see it. But I could be wrong.