Knowing vs. Doing vs. Being

The difference between knowing and doing can be a fragile line, it’s easy to understand a complex idea. It is easy to digest pseudo-Buddha ideas like, judge everyone favorably or whatever your mantra might be. Just in case you were wondering that’s mine. Judge everyone favorably. I find I most often repeat it to myself in the car on my way home. After working for seven or eight hours and sitting on the train for four more by the end of the day I’m spend all I want to do is get home and eat some dinner. So when someone does something stupid on the road it is very easy to let my emotions get carried away and start cursing the idiot in front of me. That is precisely when I start repeating to myself, judge favorably, judge favorably, maybe the guy had a bad day, maybe his wife is sick, maybe, maybe, maybe…

Usually this works for me, usually I can calm myself down enough to realize the BS I had just been feeding myself is actually true. Because it is, I can’t know what is going on with that guy; I can not possibly hope to understand him. Although I do feel that I can judge him in that moment and that is just plain wrong, I can not judge him because I do not know what its like to be him. Before you start thinking well then we can’t judge anybody might as well let rapists and murders free because how could we know what they thought about what they were doing? To which I would say we have to agree that something’s regardless of intent are wrong. Mostly what I’m getting out is the daily annoyances, the little things that cause us to lose our cool. This is not a large over reaching philosophy this is about the day in and day out of existence, and today I need to remind myself of just that.

I want to get to a point where I can change my mantra where I can get beyond the idea that I should be judging everyone favorably and just do it. The same way we train ourselves for a physical competition I have been trying to train my mind for a mental competition called: life. Because you know something? Life is only bound to get harder and more complicated as I go along; at least if it follows the current trend and if I could I’d like to keep myself mentally elastic enough to deal with it. I would like to be able to get past judge everyone favorably and move on to another idea that I need help with and there are many. But for now I’m stuck with judge favorably. So today when all else fails I repeat to myself, judge favorably, judge favorably…