Don’t Judge
Categories: Léo’s Insights 2024-2025
Every family has its quirks and its outstanding features; its strengths and weaknesses; how it shows up in public and its secrets. Every family is weird in some way. Most children want something different from the family in which they grew up regardless of whether their family was good, bad or ugly.
My dad was a World War Two veteran. The things he was exposed to as a teenaged volunteer marred him for life. His marriage was less than stellar, partially because of his issues and partially because of my mother’s. In retrospect, I believe my father suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Nobody considered just how violently damaged the WW II vets were at the time. As a consequence of his psychological damage, my father was distant even when he was at home. So even though I believe my father loved me, my maternal grandfather played a big role in my upbringing.
As a young man, I had a lot of disagreements with my dad. Maybe it was normal, maybe not, but I could not understand why we had to be so often at odds with each other. I now believe it may have been a consequence of his PTSD. In any case, after a particularly sharp disagreement in the presence of my grandfather, I left the house disturbed by yet another example of disapproval at the hands of my father.
While sitting alone and contemplating what on earth was going on, I was surprised to see my grandpa search me out. He did not say much but what he said changed my entire attitude about my dad. He said: “Parfois ton père est difficile, mais il a un bon coeur” – “Your dad can at times be very difficult, but know that he means well.”
That statement changed my life because it changed my attitude. From that point on, I saw my dad differently because of the important lesson I learned that day: Try not to judge based on what you are experiencing, but rather based on the distinct possibility that you may not know the reason those opposing you are acting the way they are. While it is possible someone may indeed have the intent to harm you, most of the time you are just in the wrong place at the wrong time and it may not actually be you the bad behaviour is directed at even if you are the unfortunate recipient. “There may be something here I do not know, and if I knew it, it could change everything.”
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