20. Don't be judgemental, you never know all of the facts.

Making decisions and judgements is a part of life. We make our way through school, the world of work, and into retirement by making thousands of decisions both large and small. Sometimes our choices are correct and productive and at other times we make mistakes. One of the mistakes to try to avoid is making judgements, especially on other people without all the facts or relevant information.

I used to work for a man whom I respected in many regards, but he did have one quality that I found difficult to accept. Sam (not his real name) was very quick to size people up and make a decision if he liked or disliked the person. I have seen him meet someone for the first time, and he let me know immediately that the person was a forty -second class idiot. He may have arrived at the determination because the person was sloppily dressed, or had bad breath, or his speech was rather crude. And once Sam made his split-second evaluation, there was no changing his mind. If he liked you from your first encounter, you would always remain in his good book. If not, you would never change Sam's assessment. 

Too often people are judged incorrectly. If a person appears to be angry or upset and interferes with the space of others we consider the person impolite and lacking in good manners. That may be the case for that one incident but here may have been circumstances that we were not aware of. The inconsiderate person may have had car trouble on the way to work, or been tagged with a speeding ticket, or was forced to be late for an important appointment. They may have had a very acceptable cause for their impolite impression. You might have encountered a totally different person if their day had not been impacted by some problematic encounters. You never know.

I always believed that people often do change with time. Some acquaintances that I may have been unimpressed with do change and grow and learn over a period of time. Who acts or responds, in the same way today that they did as a youth? I think most of us agree that we have changed and we should grant the same courtesy to others. Don't judge a book by its cover.