Judging (myself, others, actions, situations) is one of my vices. I tend to overanalyse things, break them down into subcomponents and analyse those to understand why certain things happen the way they do and see how little, seemingly insignificant changes can lead us to a completely different outcome.
Here’s a little story which helped me recognise when I’m being unreasonable with others:
A married couple has two chairs in their house. One of the chairs is broken. The wife doesn’t mind, but the husband does. It annoys him that he has to sit on a broken chair, while the wife says — don’t worry about it.
But the husband can’t let it go. This broken chair that he sits on every day is a monument to his inaction and failure. The husband goes and buys a new chair. But it needs to be assembled first. The wife decides that she wants to do it and assembles the chair.
The husband sits on the new chair and it’s also loose and wobbly, almost like the old chair.
The wife says — the company is probably cheaping out, selling shitty chairs, the chair is fine enough, don’t worry about it, maybe this is a lesson for you not to focus on chairs so much, go see a therapist.
The husband takes some tools and the wobbly chair is fixed in a minute.
The wife saw the problem as external and something to be fixed by adjusting one’s own expectations. She never assumed that the chair may be incorrectly or loosely assembled. Why even worry about something like that?
The husband saw the problem as something tangible and to be fixed by action. Whether by fixing this one or buying another one, the chair must be fixed.
Both are right in their own way. Both solve the problem.
One does this through blissful ignorance. Another by refusing to settle.
It is a cognitive bias to assume that both were aiming for the same goal from the start.
Judging another for taking a different path to you is insanity, you probably have no idea where they’re going.