Judgie Wudgie was a bear.  Lately I feel like we are all bears- and judging ones.  Perhaps this is because my social time has sky rocketed as I prepare to leave one great city and go to another.  Yet, I find myself thinking about judgement and when to apply it.

Obviously the phrase, “first impressions leave a lasting mark” does come into account. You meet someone and you take in their looks, style, body language, background, sense of identity, accomplishments, beliefs… and on and on.  When you are dating, the more you know either propels you towards someone or presents a “deal breaker”.  With friends, it becomes a question of who you give your time to.

I guess what I am realizing is that it gets harder to not to make the snap decisions about people- designating them as this or that- as we get older.  Maybe it is an issue of time. We don’t have time to cultivate friendships the way we did when we wasted our summer days building forts and spending entire nights awake looking at the stars whilst camped out on the backyard trampoline.

Here is the thing though, I don’t want to fall into being a bear. I earnestly want to give people the benefit of showing me who they are, as I hope they will give me the opportunity. Therefore, I still subscribe to my rule of 3. You give a new person in your life 3 times to get to know them before placing judgement. As we make our ways forward tangled up in our busy lives, I do encourage you to try the rule of 3 too- you may miss someone amazing if you don’t.