Among some of my friends, I have a reputation as being highly accepting of other people. They see that I have a broad array of friends from different backgrounds, with different qualities, some of whom value certain things higher than anything else, others of whom value other things higher than anything else. Some of my friends think I'm so accepting, that they can't understand why I'd waste my time being friends with some of those other friends. Some of my friends think I'm so accepting, that they can't understand how I manage to fit all the people in my life that I do, without cracking under the strain.
Other friends of mine don't think I'm so accepting, but they believe I do have certain qualities that might seem to be accepting. These friends hear me rant and rail against one thing and another, and hear me pass my judgments; and they don't perceive me to be accepting at all. But they do see how my particular type of judgments would allow for a wide array of different types of friendships.
So for example, I'm judgmental towards people who are mean or dishonest. In fact those are really my central requirements for deciding whether to reject someone - are they mean or dishonest? If they are, then I don't want to have them as friends.
The result of that, however, is that I can be friends with atheists, religious people, criminals, corporate types, dreamers, and so on. There are honest, non-mean people in all cultures and all walks of life. So, I'm still quite a judgmental person, but not in such a way that my sphere of acquaintance would be limited to looking a certain way or sharing any particular obvious qualities.
So, there's that. But when I go to visit my family on Thanksgiving, I discover an entirely different kind of judgment. There are deep antagonisms I feel towards every member of my family, each having to do with our own unique history, and my experience growing up.
There's a certain amount of variability. Sometimes I don't just get mad at everyone; I'll be relatively outwardly calm, and I'll manage to engage in watching movies or eating meals, and I'll listen to the family news, and give news about the people I'm in touch with.
But, even just being in the same room with any of them; hearing the way their glass sounds as it touches the table; hearing the sound of their shoes or socks or slippers or bare feet as they walk in their particular way, just reveals some aspect of their personality that jangles all my nerves. There's Marie, fingering her way through all the forks in the drawer, because she can't get a grip on one of them easily, and she figures that just fingering her way through all of them will result in one of them fitting into her hand the way she wants. She won't take the time to look at the forks, and bring her thumb and forefinger over to one of them, so as to grasp it and pick it up; she'll just finger them all, making the noise of someone who doesn't care who else knows her approach to getting a fork. And I'm the same way! I hear in her lazy fumbling, my own lazy fumbling when I'm home in my safe environment. I go through the forks in the exact same way, using the same technique because I too can't seem to bring my attention around to whatever I'm actually doing, and I can't be bothered to give a moment's thought to how to pick up a fork; but instead I stubbornly insist on thinking about whatever topic happens to be in my mind at the time; and these stupid forks are just intentionally trying to distract me from all that, and I'll be damned if I'm going to give in to their childish cry for attention.
And I wonder, would I be the same kind of parent she was, lazily pursuing my own intentions, my own artistic activities or any other project I cared about, determined to ignore my children's pleas for attention and affection?
Or there's Mike, trying to use the new netflix account I set up for him, trying to use the roku interface, and having no idea what to click on, or how to navigate; and I'm explaining it over and over, and getting more agitated the whole time, because I've never been able to teach him anything about computers, no matter how hard I tried, dating back to the days of the 386; and instead it's always been other people who've been able to pierce his veil of ignorance, and help him understand what an icon was, and how to click on it; and now one of his students, whose praises he sings endlessly, helps him with computer problems all the time. And I still can't even show him how to pick a movie on netflix. But he'll patiently talk to me about Rawls and social theory and economics and political philosophy, never getting frustrated in spite of the fact that I get distracted, and lose the thread of what he's saying, and can't really catch up, and just don't seem to be very much of a thinker at all, in spite of growing up under his care, and being taught so much as a child, playing together, and hearing his many lessons about what it meant to be an intellectual; and reading such difficult books at such a young age.
Or there's Letty, now with her own children whose childhood I've missed too much of already; and she very judgmental herself, and who I gave up on finally last year because she didn't want me to invite a lot of people over to hang out and enjoy each other's company, and then complained to me in front of the kids about how I was afraid of not forming a connection with them while they were young. It makes me just want to forget that she and the rest of them exist at all, and pretend that that part of my life is just empty and void; I have no sister, I have no niece or nephew, I haven't alienated them and lost the possibility of real closeness, I haven't gradually become the strange uncle who doesn't say much and who isn't really fun.
I have no high ground with any of them. Just these resentful emotions I can't seem to shake, even though every one of them would rather be close and affectionate with me, than have these strange resentments and judgments. But I just can't get over it.
So, some of my friends think I'm very accepting; and some think I'm pretty judgmental about certain things; but very few of my friends know much of my family context, or the petty judgments that overwhelm me and inhabit so much of my consciousness, so much of the time.
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