Our life has been somewhat exciting, although The Fox played far too often in our home last week. All of us can sing it now (minus Mr.C who doesn’t sing). We had a busy weekend, with both Joe and I going to workshops and traveling down to my parents on Sunday. All of my siblings and their families were together for the first time in two years. That was fun.

I had a thought while we were doing an activity at the workshop I went to. (The workshop was on permaculture, and what follow is mostly unrelated.) I started doing it and noticed a huge change in the way I thought about everything. Basically, I decided to stop passing judgement, but simply observe. Even if I do decide something, I assign it to myself. So I see someone. I can think, She is fat and ugly.  This would be judging, and not a very nice one at that. Instead I could think She is a larger person and I don’t like the way it looks. Not a big shift, but it no longer blames other people or things for my own opinions. I can even do it with myself from, I am a horrible person for yelling at my kids, to I yelled at my kids. It made both my kids and me sad.  Which one is actually going to help me stop?

It certainly isn’t limited to bad judgement either. How many time do I look at something good or beautiful and instead of rejoicing in it, become a bit envious? Her house is beautiful…..often leads to thinking that my house isn’t. But Her house was clean and she had artwork up that I liked is not only hard to lead to envious thinking but is a far better compliment. I’ve heard similar opinions on complimenting our children. I don’t say they are smart or beautiful or that craft looks nice. I say they tried hard, they are clean, and that picture has a lot of purple on it.   Just something to think about, and for me, something to work on.