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Talking about judging people before understanding them, this prompt just took me to when I was younger, years back I could vividly remember what happened to my father and how he lost one of his motorcycles.
My father was a kind man and he liked helping people. He always believed in doing good for others, and whenever he had the opportunity to help someone, he always did his best.
There was a time he helped a friend of his to collect a loan from a cooperative. He stood as the guarantor because he trusted the man and believed he would pay back the money.
Unfortunately, immediately after the man collected the money, he disappeared. My father searched for him, but nobody could find him. When it was time to pay back the loan, the people came to meet my father because he was the guarantor.
At the end of the day, he had to carry another man's problem on his head, he was forced to sell one of his motorcycles to pay back the debt.
I was still young then, but I can remember how difficult that period was for our family. It was not an easy experience for him at all. After everything that happened, he made up his mind that he would never stand as a guarantor for anybody again.
One Sunday evening after church service, a woman who was very close to our family came to our house, she came to beg my father to help her get a loan from the cooperative and stand as her guarantor, and promised that she would pay at when due.
My father refused, he explained to her that he had done it before and regretted it because of what happened to him, that he was not trying to be wicked but because he simply did not want to put himself in that kind of situation again.
The woman left our house unhappy that evening, What pained me was what happened afterwards. We heard that she was going around telling people that my father was a wicked man who did not want to help her, despite how close she was with my family
I could not understand it then, how could someone who knew my father and how helpful he was say such a thing about him?
She only saw the fact that my father refused to help her, she did not consider what he had gone through before. She did not even see the motorcycle he sold or the stress he passed through because he trusted someone who disappointed him.
She judged him based on one decision without trying to understand the reason behind it.
As I grew older, I began to understand that this is something we do often as human beings. We are quick to conclude things about people without knowing what they have experienced or what they are dealing with.
Sometimes, someone refuses to help us, and we immediately call the person wicked, someone does not greet us the way we expect, and we conclude that the person is proud, or someone keeps to themselves, and we start saying they think they are better than others, without thinking if there's something we don't know.
Now that I am a teacher, I see how important this is, especially when dealing with children. A child who is always restless, quiet, or stubborn may have something going on at home, maybe the he did not eat before coming to school, maybe he did not sleep well. Or perhaps something is troubling the him but do not know how to explain it.
If I judge that child immediately because of his behaviour, I may end up treating him unfairly without knowing what he is passing through.
This does not mean that every bad behaviour should be accepted. Children still need correction, and people should be held responsible for their actions. But there is a difference between correcting someone and looking down on them without trying to understand their situation.
My father's experience taught me something I will not forget, sometimes, what looks like wickedness to one person may simply be another person's way of protecting themselves from being hurt again.
That is why I now try to be careful before judging people. I may not always know the full story, and I may never know what someone has gone through before meeting me.
Whenever I find myself about to conclude something about someone, I try to ask myself one question: What if there is something about this person's situation that I don't know.
