Natalie apparently was with Gabriella Cilmi yesterday at Universal. She is 16. I love her. It’s so wrong but i can’t help it. I’m also fighting the nagging pain of missing Kelly, even though i’m glad she’s nowhere near me.

There’s no way around it. I am very judgemental. I always have been. I’m sitting with Joel Osteen on in the background with all his positive talk and feeling very hypocritical. I’ve been having to do a lot of thinking lately about not judging people, which has been very difficult. In the last few weeks i’ve gone through dealing with letting go of massive anger, facing up to appearing arrogant, and now, i have to look at how i can be more accepting and judge people less. I know i do it but it’s hard to find out why. As time has gone on, i’ve found my mindset slowly changing and my thoughts drifting naturally in a progressive way over the rough edges of what i call me.

I find the Biblical line on judgement very, very hard. It’s not as if it’s ambiguous. Being “holier than thou” is a “foul stench in the nostrils of God” and extremely offensive spiritually. Saying “do not judge” isn’t hard to understand, but it’s so hard not to do as we do so automatically. I am particularly bad with it. I judge very quickly and very harshly. Listening to Joel on being prejudiced and being loving has been immensely challenging for me.

I find the darkest motivation for me is watching and listening to my dad because i can hear him in me, especially when i am feeling defensive and angry. He appoints himself as a judge, somehow presiding over a situation as if he is being asked for advice and/or a ruling. He thinks he is the authority and the ultimate overlord in deciding whether something is right or appropriate, like he is owed an answer to the most personal of questions whenever he demands it. I hate it, although i think it may be a way of depersonalising.

I’m not quite like that but i worry i am too blinkered when i’m furious that i regress to what i saw and learnt from him when i was small. I am no doubt going to be returning to this topic.

There is even an in-joke about me amongst my friends nicknamed the “Curse of Cameron” that i found out about recently. It started in regards to business, as i have a spooky knack of being able to predict which companies will fail and which will make it, and after i’ve damned them in public, they die off within months. It happens with girls too, as when we split up, they tend to go downhill fast, physically and emotionally. I joke that no weapon can harm me (of course it can) but it is weird that no-one who messes with me ever prospers. Cursing others isn’t a good thing or something i want to brag about.

They say judgement comes from pride – the belief that we ourselves would never do the things we are so judgemental of. Mine is always in anger, and it’s extremely fierce. I can’t stand stupid people or those who are callous; people who are told they are doing the wrong thing or given the right thing to do by multiple friends, but they go ahead and do it their way anyway, knowing it to be wrong. It ends up hurting a lot of others, but mostly hurts them. I just don’t get how someone can knowingly do something they know is probably wrong, and will stubbornly claim they are right when they know inside it’s not true.

I may be stubborn and strong-minded, but i am very weak when it comes to that cognitive dissonance. I can’t stand the conflict in my head of outwardly saying one thing whilst knowing the other to be true. I just don’t have the strength (or ability for denial) you need to do it.
Being judgemental for me is endemic, and i’ve spent a while now trying to work out why i do it. It’s an automatic reflex, just like kicking people when they are down. I know it’s a defensive thing, but i can’t work out why you would bother. My best guess it is that it is a way of depersonalising a situation or somehow blocking it out. Compassion can sometimes feel like pity, and there have been so many people (cough, girls) in my life that have been manipulative and put on the crocodile tears to propagate their lies, get attention or just lounge around in self-pity. It makes you cynical, but it’s not that.

I don’t believe i’m better than you even though it might appear that way sometimes. I’m certainly not averse to highlighting my mistakes or saying when i have been stupid. I’m stupid more times than not. I’m also proud, but what man isn’t? But what is it in me that damns you and makes me take that decision you are something as a person rather than you have done something stupid? I find it very difficult to keep my temper or not express my frustration when someone is in a mess from another stupid thing they’ve done against good advice.

My prayer has been fairly simple – please make it possible for me to be less judgemental. In all of my prayers it has been the same as you have to meet the Father half-way – please make it possible that i can do this. I can’t forgive, please make it possible for me to be able to forgive. It’s something i have to consciously do, rather than something to ask to be delivered on a plate to your doorstep like a pizza. When i’m disgusted and angry, you know about it. And it’s not just frustration, it’s a torrent of self-righteous viciousness and bile that will punch you right down into the hole you crawled out of to darken my day. Once i’ve made my decision about what you are, that’s it. You’re condemned.

If you want to feel my hate, just do something callous. I can’t put on a smile for you or pretend like nothing’s happened until you’ve resolved it. Nothing can be normal until you’ve apologised, made up for it and corrected it. I don’t want you to understand or hear my feelings, i want it fixed. And as long as it’s not fixed, you can fuck off until it is. I am intolerant of others’ mistakes and their shortcomings if they know what they are doing is silly, and i expect you all to be as introspective and reflective as me, evolving yourself as you go along and learn. Denial is something i am particularly vicious on, as is childishness.

I can’t learn any of these things on my own. I have to pray about them as i’m just not big enough or clever enough to re-program my heart in the way i need to be able to. The Father is very clear on this and watching Joel has been humbling in so many ways. All of us are the creation of God and none are above any other. By judging, we put ourselves in the Father’s place, and that’s blatant blasphemy. We cannot presume to know how He does things or why things are imperfect at that moment as He may have designed it that way for a reason to accomplish something very specific. We cannot second-guess Him or resent Him for it. Those people are in your life for a reason.

I am no-one to criticise someone else, or damn them. It is not my place, but i can’t help doing it from that defensiveness. Life for me is about finding balance as you need to judge situations, but not people. Being negative doesn’t help anyone because only praise motivates. I have no reason or right to put myself above anyone else. It’s almost like i’m re-drawing the boundary around myself and shutting out the feelings that come with it that bond me – compassion, vulnerability, equality etc. It takes a stronger man to rise above it, pull down those walls and love someone inside rather than shut them out. It may also be a response to the judgement and rejection i’d felt, like a fight-back knee-jerk reaction of rejecting someone back.

Like in all things, understanding why you do something automatically leads you to stop doing it once you get why it is so negative.

The hypocritical irony is that i expect other people to be patient with me whilst i work this out and not judge me, but i wouldn’t extend them the same courtesy.

A lot of it comes from the way you were raised. At Acorn this week the talk was about the need to understand, feel and appreciate your roots, because someone who is rootless is lost and will not know who they are. Only when you understand where you come from can you know who you are. Trees have roots, and one central root that feeds all the others called the “tap root”. Without them, they are useless and desolate as the roots feed the whole plant. If you are rootless, you are blown about all over the place, all the time. You can’t make decisions, don’t know what to do, don’t know which is up and which is down, and are forever in a confused mess that’s unreal.

But what is also equally important is that just as you can not know your roots, you can also disown them or deny them. That in turn makes you rootless and blown about all the over the place from not knowing who you are.

See that’s where it starts to confuse me as i have immense compassion for those who are lost and can never seem to get it right. I am too compassionate sometimes for my own good, and deeply angry with others who refuse to show it when they can. I can’t watch a person suffer and not intervene if i have the power to relieve that suffering. I often get told it’s because of that i get myself into so many scrapes because i should let people suffer, feel my condemnation and take the consequences of their actions.

There is also this issue of being articulate. I’m fortunate as i am able to articulate and communicate myself fairly well, and i get very angry with others when they are unable to do the same. I see it as a failure to think, when i know it’s sometimes just that as well as being emotionally retarded, those who offend me simply aren’t any good at expressing themselves or articulating their heart and mind to me in the way i would like them to.

But regardless, i judge and give them a kicking and i don’t know why.

Very few had the same upbringing as me or faced the battles i faced. I’m not saying i had it worse, only that my life when i was younger was exceptional in the sense of it was different. My older friends can be very nasty which is why i am careful of whom i introduce to them, as they will rip you apart if they don’t think you’re genuine.

In my world, we grew up fast. We may not have had guns and been in a ghetto, but we had an interesting alternative in being white-collar kids with more money, less to do and a hell of a lot to rebel against. To give you an idea, we were smoking by 12, drunk by 13, lost our virginity by 14 and had done every drug you could think of by 15. 9 dads had killed themselves, most parents were divorced, everyone had been arrested more than once and had criminal records for some quite serious offences (assault, breaking and entering, criminal damage, drunk and disorderly etc), as well as writing off cars and more dangerous pursuits (like car-surfing). A good few of us had been expelled from school, more than a dozen suspended and police involvement at school cost several people i know their exams, if they were ever there in the first place to know.

Over 20 of my friends went to prison, 7 became mentally ill, 2 were convicted for murder (stabbings). Day to day we were using faked ID to get ourselves whatever we wanted, were always drunk (in lessons, all out free time), dealing drugs (me making them), detonating homemade explosives, setting fire to large fields and 4 houses were completed destroyed with over 50k of damage in each. You are talking about the same bunch of people who took LSD and hung out in an abattoir and fired fireworks at each other horizontally 6ft away for amusement. We weren’t always violent but there was a distinct stripe of outright nastiness that occasionally verged on cruelty as we learned to bully the bullies.

And that was all before we hit our twenties. After that we had money, could travel, and the world was open for business.

That may sound extreme, but believe me it was normal to use. When i hear all these tales of people getting over-excited about clubbing, or thinking they are so cool for doing a line of coke or being remotely rebellious, i just raise an eyebrow and chuckle to myself at their innocence. I may not have seen everything but i was brought up in a violent Christian fundamentalist home where all was about judgement and pushed academically against my will in a very nasty way. If i’m judgemental, it’s because i had to learn how to protect myself, but i know that’s not appropriate now. So like a Windows device driver, i’m having to roll back.

Where i come from wasn’t great, but it’s part of who i am today. Those are my roots and i know many others don’t share the same background. They have no right to judge me and i have no right to judge them. If they don’t get it as quickly as i do i have to calm my frustration and make a choice as to how to respond even if my whole being is telling me to lash out in frustration. I hate the fact humans can’t just get it first time round – it drives me mad. I hate the lack of diligence and the absurd pride. Part of re-establishing your identity seems to be owning your past no matter how good or bad, or painful it may be. It formed you and moulded you, and grew your character. It was almost certainly deficient so you didn’t get what you needed, but at least it gives you a sense of living history that forms your roots.

It does make sense to me intellectually that judgement is wrong, but it’s a hard thing to kick from your heart. It makes sense that i am simply that way as my parents were very judgemental and i just picked it up along the way. I don’t want to be like that. Middle England is a very judgemental place and people – all you have to do that is to read the Daily Mail. The discernment comes in judging that someone or something is wrong for you, not just wrong in general. Then you have the issue of moral absolutes, because there are many things that are just wrong and there are many people who deserve the judgement reaped on them (like criminals, paedophiles etc).

For you it’s probably a total non-issue as you had a good fair set of role models that imparted their wise and balanced outlook onto you naturally. But for the rest of us who have to walk down this road on our own and spend most of our lives trying to fix it so we can live normally and not pass it down the generational line, this is hard.

So give me a couple of weeks as it takes time to settle in. Once i have established the intellectual reasons why being judgemental is bad, i can start to apply that emotionally and make changes. I have such a lot of life changes going on at the moment that it’s hard to see where i am or where i’m going. All i know is that it’s never, ever been boring.