I Don’t Like to Judge…But.

I’m pretty much a non-judgmental person, though this isn’t a virtue I’ve cultivated or a moral position I strive toward. As my wife Suzie has pointed out on many occasions, normally in an exasperated tone, I tend to wander through life in a state of “fuzzdom.” Suzie’s phrase, not mine.

Case in point: last week my opinion was asked about the dress sense of the weird guy with the high heels, lime green miniskirt, and shocking pink topknot hairstyle we passed while crossing the road. My reply was honest—I couldn’t even remember crossing the road. I wouldn’t make a good detective.

I find the occasional marital tension this causes to be gloriously amusing, but sometimes my unintentional “fuzzdom” is penetrated by what I consider the unusual behaviors of people around me.

The other day I held open the door to a convenience store to let two young women pushing prams and trailing children enter ahead of me. They must have been regulars, as the clerk greeted the tattoo-covered and unconventionally dressed young women by name. The children, as they all do, kept picking up candy bars and asking for them, only to receive sharp rebukes and have them roughly removed from their hands.

The two women then proceeded to purchase their “usual” $50 of lotto and $30 of instant win tickets, two packs of cigarettes, and a four-pack of energy drinks. They kindly conceded to the household budget and purchased $5 of electricity and $5 on a prepaid gas card, and with an exasperated tone reluctantly let the kids each have a 10-cent candy lolly before leaving the shop.

I paid the clerk for my selection, wished her a good day, and left. The whole incident left me feeling sad and a little unsettled and uncomfortable.

On the drive home my mind kept replaying the scene, and I couldn’t help but judge the young women. I haven’t walked in their shoes—though I’ve worn shoes thin enough. Growing up in Ireland during the Troubles, I knew what it meant to feed coins into a meter and pray the electric would last. I knew what choosing between heat and food felt like.

Surely their priorities are wrong? Even as I thought it, I knew the judgment was too easy. Perhaps the lottery tickets are hope, the only escape route when every other path to security is closed. Maybe those cigarettes are the one small claim to pleasure in a life that grinds. And the children? Everyone’s had days when patience evaporates and everything feels impossible. I can see all this, understand it even, but that doesn’t quite dissolve the judgment. It just makes it more uncomfortable to hold.

The money spent on gambling and addictive tobacco would be better used for their personal financial future. If you can spend over $125 on indulgence, you can’t really argue there’s no money to create an emergency fund or set up retirement accounts. Their family budget could be better served by buying more gas or electricity rather than spending on vices. Maybe they could show a little more parental grace to their children.

But here’s what gnaws at me: I don’t know if I’m judging from understanding or from the particular blindness that comes after escape. When you’ve clawed your way out of poverty, does it make you wiser about it, or just more impatient with those who chose differently? I really don’t know.

This I do know: there are better uses of money than those young mothers’ choices. But I also know that judgment from someone who made it to the middle-class bubble—however I got here—doesn’t help them. Life can be difficult beyond my slightly privileged circle now, and it was difficult within my unprivileged circle then.

Judgment can be easy, but understanding and solutions are not. The uncomfortable truth is I prefer my “fuzzdom”—not because I don’t understand, but because I understand just enough to know I can’t fix it, that’s up to the individual.