As a kid, I think I had almost everything I needed and even things I did not need. My dad made sure he provided everything for us. So growing up, money was never an issue for me. My dad made sure everything we wore was the best, no matter how expensive, so we never looked at or envied other people. I remember several times how my aunts and uncles would complain about how expensive my shoes, wrist watch, and perfume were for someone my age. It was not easy for guys to ask me out even at my teen age because I always wondered what they would offer me, and this made me proud, but that is not even the gist.
I noticed sometime after my secondary school education how some of my friends and girls I knew were following guys and gisting about how those guys were always gifting them with money and other material things, and to me, it did not make sense. I was always judgmental and did not want to know why people were doing what they were doing. I thought everyone had what I had.
This particular day, I was with one of my male friends. We were talking and gisting about a female friend of mine, and I kept complaining and judging her behavior. And this is when my male friend called my name and said, Oma, you have no right to judge anyone. no matter what they do, did, or are still doing. You are not in their shoes, and you do not know why they made the decisions they made. Be it a prostitute or theif, you do not know what kind of upbringing they had; you do not know what they had to go through to make such a decision. Even though it does not make sense to you, do not judge people. Their reasons might sound stupid or weird in your ears, but they were the perfect reasons for them. And he went ahead to say, "Do not get me wrong; I do not support people who behave wrongly or immorally, but I also do not judge them; I just make excuses for them".
Even with everything he said to me that day, it still did not make sense to me, but I did not want to say anything. Let it not be like I had a coconut head. I just said thank you to end the long conversation, but I hid those words somewhere in my heart.
Until years later, something happened to me at home, and I kept explaining to my family why I made the decision I made, but no one seemed to understand me; they were all judgmental. The words of my friend kept ringing in my head, and I understood what he was trying to say to me that day.
A lot of decisions people make do not really make sense to us, but if you were in those people's shoes, you would have made the same decision, a better decision, or even the worst decision.
From that day on, I have tried to make excuses and understand why people do what they do, even when it does not make logical sense to me.
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