Dear Friend,
My New Year’s intention was to pay attention to all the ways and places and methods I judge people. Watching myself with this overarching intention this year, I have been learning so much about myself and where I’m judgmental.
I was having an interesting conversation the other day with my sister around a trip some dear friends recently took. I was telling her about how, upon their return from Central and Eastern Europe, they commented to me how communism ruined those countries. I got to thinking quite a bit about that topic, because communism is essentially how families act, and it started some deep internal conversations within me about I personally have no interest in seeing communism move from the family unit to a successful economic system that I participate in.
My husband and I spend quite a bit of money on our child on daycare, food, the necessary safety items needed for a young child, etc. We do all this freely and with no future promise of a return on our investment – the essence of communism. I was pondering why it works within our family system and most families out there. Quite simply, the reason it works is love.
We love our child and therefore the intangibles of how we feel interacting as a family balances out the monetary investment we are making. Essentially communism works within a family system, but not as an economic system because, quite frankly, there’s just not enough love. Families are structures around largely intangibles like experiences and memories. These are their “currency”.
Our economic systems aren’t structured around love. My economic system isn’t structured around love. Somehow, I realized as this internal conversation was going on, I have no ability to cross walk from the family system to an economic system. I have no way to enlarge my feelings within my family to include all of humanity within that family. When I look deep within myself, I have no interest in engaging in an economic system that mirrors a family unit – I’m interested in making sure that everyone is “paying their dues” and “doing their part” and operating from their best selves. All this really does, though, is contributing to me being able to feel justified in sitting in judgement on people.
As I sat with this truth that most of us have, but don’t typically even think about or realize is judgement, I realized how damaging it is…how much it doesn’t allow people to really come from their best selves, because essentially someone is already ready to say, “Your best isn’t good enough.”
That’s not a position of love. Ever.
From one goddess….