Don't Yuck My Yum: How Can I Be So Brazen As To Say I'm Always Right?

Lately I’ve been inundated with “judgers.” I used to be one. I think I was probably one of the worst. I didn’t realize it, but my world was black and white. I lived by my standards of right and wrong. And I assumed that people around me should follow and abide by the same set of standards. After all, right is right. And wrong is wrong. Right?

But then one day I found myself in a relationship that l knew I had to end. And I fell apart. My world as I knew it and the life that I had planned for myself was going to be different. There was no way around that. That’s when I learned the important lesson, “not everything works out.” All of the sudden I realized that other people around me had lives that were different than what I had considered “the right path.” And unlike a few weeks prior when I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to do things differently, I now understood why. It wasn’t for me to judge their lives. Everyone’s circumstances are just different.

About a decade later I found myself living in California as a stay-at-home mom with an executive husband who worked at PepsiCo. He made a fantastic six-digit salary. Years prior we’d paid off both cars and all our school loans. No credit card debt. But we still went upside down on our mortgage and had to move in with my parents. Who knew the real estate industry would collapse? Not us. We bought a house we could totally afford, fixed it up and then in a month we had lost everything we’d put into the house and more, much more. It happened in a flash.

One day a woman said to me, “Of course the real estate industry is falling apart. It’s about time. Now all those white trash idiots who bought houses they couldn’t afford can stop being so irresponsible.” I took a deep breath and said, “We’re not all white trash.” And then walked away. Stupid judger. I realized how small her world was. She only had one point of view.

Now it’s years later and I’ve been hearing rumblings about this person cheating on that person and this mother not disciplining her children properly. And everyone is so quick to judge. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I condone cheating or advocate lazy parenting. I’m just saying, who knows what’s going on in that person’s world? Life gets pretty complicated. Should I not be friends with someone who cheated on her husband? What if she just never told anyone that he abused her? Every situation has a thousand points of view. How can I be so brazen to say mine is the only one people should look at? I just can’t.

A few weeks ago I went to Ravinia with a bunch of girlfriends. We all got in the car with our allocated snacks and beverages (mine was Solixir, of course). Excited to taste everything that was contributed to the cooler, we ripped into something that my girlfriend brought. As we were tearing it open she explained that this was her favorite snack EVER and she’s been eating it since she was a little kid. We all reached in the bag and grabbed one excitedly. She popped one in her mouth, chewed and smiled from ear to ear. But within seconds we were all spitting it out in disgust as she gave her tummy a figurative rub. Yet watching her eat it looked like she was devouring a perfectly cut steak. One of the other woman exclaimed, “Gross! These are disgusting. How can you eat these?” My friend immediately responded, “Hey, don’t yuck my yum!” And she was so right.

To be fair, I was in complete agreement with “the yucker.” I thought the snack we’d just veraciously ripped open and innocently popped in our mouths tasted something like dog food. However, I was so proud of her for standing up to us “yuckers” (myself included). We had no right to taint her “yum”. After all, maybe it wasn’t the taste that was so delicious to her. Maybe it was the memory of how and when she ate it as a kid. Who were we to judge? I bet there’s tons of stuff I love that she’d think was disgusting. Well, maybe not quite as disgusting...