Image is mine
I used to be a highly judgmental person, and this made me rather insensitive towards other people's plight.
To me back then, life was either white or black, I do not believe in grey areas or the in between. Whenever I see people in certain situations, I really do not feel the need to care or be compassionate.
I'd always want to think that oh it's the person's fault for being in such situations. I'd also go, maybe if they had done things differently, they wouldn't be caught in such a web.
Basically, I use to always feel everyone should be like me, think like me or rather I expected everyone to act like me. So when I see them acting in a certain type of way that I disapprove of, I get really irritated and hostile towards them.
I did not like the person that I was, and I wish I could just ignore that time of my life and focus on where I started getting life right.
Back then, when I get really insensitive my mom will always warn me to stop. In her words, life is like a table and it turns. Today it can be good for you and tomorrow it can be good for someone else.
The thing with life is that you must learn from experience and oh, the table did turn. I faced almost every situation that I condemned, I felt the pain that those people felt and I felt the hurt from my hostile nature.
At a point, it dawned on me that I am facing exactly what I had condemned and felt I am too perfect to experience. When I got to that point, I came to the realization that life is not black and white and it became an awareness that it's ok to make mistakes.
Even though it's past, I mentally apologized to all those people that I was insensitive towards their plight and it did make me feel ok.
Currently, I try my best to be a listener and even when I feel that judgmental part of me creeping in, I am quickly reminded from experience that everyone cannot be me and it's ok to not be perfect.
I have been imperfect and people did not judge me, I know how I felt like being loved, and I also know how it feels like to be judged harshly in a situation I had no control over. Life taught me and I have gone on to being the rainbow in someone's dark cloud, the sunshine and not the thunderstorm.