Which TV show did you choose to watch yesterday, and which one did you decide to record? Which restaurant did you elect to visit this weekend, and what did you choose to eat? Which job did you decide to opt for? Earlier in life, what profession did you select to pursue? Didn't you make choices regarding whom you befriended and whom you dated?

No, I'm not conducting a survey here...just thinking that life is about so many choices and so many decisions, and decisions are made based on judgements we make. Based on the information we have at a given time, and the opportunities that come our way, we make judgements first, and then choices. A choice cannnot be made without making a judgement. We judge what is likely to be suitable to our tastes and make choices based on that.

As intelligent human beings, all of us are judgemental. Judgements we make can relate to practical matters as well as abstract ones. We judge and review the movies we watch, the songs we listen to, and the books we read. We analyze and determine whether a given locality would be suitable for us to live in, or in terms of appreciation of real-estate costs, safety of the neighborhood, quality of the school district, and based on these and other factors, we make a judgement about buying a house in the locality.

Yet, being judgemental is considered  a derogatory term. Are we judgemental when we judge for purposes other than for making choices pertaining to our own lives? So, that means we are permitted to judge people, when we are trying to make a choice about whether they can be our friends or not.

Most of us do exercise the option to evaluate and judge those around us even if we are not actively interested in making friends with the person in question, and this happens at an unconscious level. Perhaps it is the parameters one uses to judge that  make us judgemental (as used in the derogatory sense), rather than the actual act of judging. If our parameters are shallow like looks, money, etc., that is if we tend to "judge a book by its cover," does that make us judgemental, or shallow, or both?

The truth is, all of us would like to be accepted for what we are, not evaluated, second guessed, or analyzed. We hate to have our actions and words misinterpreted, and motives assigned to each thing we say or do. We hate to be ridiculed for not conforming, speaking a different language (figuratively or literally), or having a different point of view. And if this is what we hate being subjected to, we shouldn't practise this behavior either.

It's hard to tell where one draws the line between living intelligently and making intelligent choices on the one hand, and being unduly judgemental on the other.