Judging

Sometimes you can't help but judge a book by its cover. In this case, instead of a book, I mean people.

Coming to a new place and new ward after being in my ward for 10+ years, it's easy to come to some sort of conclusion about people just based on the meaningless small talk that ensues at ward activities, or in class. Whatever.

Now, one of my biggest faults is that I can be extremely judgmental. It's bad, really. It's going to make me bitter in my old age if I let it. I can already tell. I always end up coming to some sort of false initial conclusion about people based on mostly superficial things or quirks they may have, but in the end...I sort of like them! Those people grow on me, and my initial opinion on them is wrong. It's just how it is and how it goes. I kind of try to prove myself wrong as I get to know them better. I have a hard time with people who appear to have that "popular-high-school" look, though. I don't know how to define this particular kind of people, but I have this terrible, wrong stereotype in my head that they're all stuck-up, self-centered people who don't care about anybody else unless it benefits them.

Now, one of these kinds of people is in my ward, and is a very attractive guy. Like I said, I formulate awful opinions even when I don't know people, and also like I said, I'm almost always wrong in my opinions. We'll call this guy Michael. I had never actually met Michael until last week, and figured I would introduce myself at a ward activity we had and maybe get to know a little more about him. Upon talking with him, I found myself thinking that my initial opinions of him were....well, kind of right on. He wasn't really friendly to me, which isn't necessarily a fault, but the things he said to me kind of made me think he was a little superficial.

Okay, I thought. Maybe I'm still wrong. I tried to tell myself that, but meh. It didn't really work. I sort of had this formulated opinion. If he redeemed himself in my eyes, I'd give him that much, but I was waiting for the time when he would do that.

It hasn't happened. In fact, today, Michael kind of became more of an egotistical moron in my eyes. He comes across very into himself...like he knows that he's attractive and wants to make sure everybody else knows it too. I don't know. So...today at another ward activity (holy crap, we have SO MANY of these, it's ridiculous...it keeps me entertained, at least) he was being really obnoxious and drawing all this attention to himself. He ended up standing right in front of me while we were congregated in a circle listening to announcements or something, and I had this cup of almost-finished hot chocolate in my hands. I looked at it, and then looked at his nice, clean jacket in front of me. I had to restrain myself from like, throwing it at him.

Wow. I'm so judgmental of some people sometimes. I'm kind of a terrible person. I just want to leave this disclaimer that I'm not judgmental of everybody. I'm really not. Most of the time, it's just those cocky people that I think come across as better than everybody that I can't tolerate....but even then, most of them don't end up really being like that.

And while writing this post, I realized who Michael reminds me of. There was this kid on student council with me last year who acted a lot like he does. Liked to draw attention to himself, attractive, cocky. Blech.