When I, belatedly, attended class 1B at a primary school in Germany for the first time at the age of 7, a short time later my parents, who had recently moved with me from Ukraine, were asked to attend a teacher's consultation.

What they understand in their broken German is worrying.

Elementary school teacher’s verdict:
"Little Michael can barely speak, doesn't participate in class and I'm not sure what he really gets out of class. It would be good to do something!"

About a year later, same classroom, same class, same teacher consultation and no less worrying.

Elementary school teacher’s verdict:
"Michael can't sit for 5 minutes without opening his mouth. He speaks without announcing himself and makes contact with other students during class without my permission! This is extremely stressful for me as a teacher and for you as well Parents should do something about it."

So there I was, at just 8 years old, doubly convicted. Speaking too little - not good. Talking too much - even worse. So what was left for me and my parents?

I'm very lucky to not have overzealous/overprotective parents. What did they do after the two consultation hours? Not much. Fortunately! Otherwise, at the age of 30, I wouldn't be able to speak Russian fluently or would have (even more) inhibitions about communicating with people.

My parents let things happen. They had enough worries of their own, so they didn't take on the worries of the overzealous teacher. As a child, I of course noticed what was being said about me and drew my conclusions from it: I am not enough and I am too much .

Do you know too? Ouch.

That was the beginning of a less than glorious school period, which was characterized by precisely these two judgments - alternately, simultaneously and in all the shapes and colors that geometry and art offered.

Now it seems easy to denigrate the verdict - to banish it. But by doing so we would also banish what is good, beautiful and righteous. We would banish our humanity, subjectivity, purposeful appreciation and drive for improvement. In short: Then we transform into enlightened people, trees, stones or other wise, earthly beings with little motivation for action. Because everything is .

Stupid with judgment, stupid without judgment... everything stupid?

The answer is: it's up to you.

With your ability to judge, you decide how to account for what your environment presents to you. The most important and at the same time most challenging thing here is that we become aware that we are judging.

The moment we become conscious we find the space that allows us to decide. In doing so, we are not judging out of habit, social convention or misconception. In this space lies the magic of shaping your reality and letting things that you cannot change be good . This room gave Viktor Frankl the opportunity, as an inmate of the concentration camp in Auschwitz, to come to spiritual wisdom and recognize the good in people in the midst of the greatest possible misery.

Why is this so important to me?

Our judgment is our (God-given) voice, which has an influence in the world. Through our judgment we express blessings, praise and recognition. Or we blame, criticize and put down. The judgment of one individual can set masses in motion, perform miracles or trigger genocides. So if there was a forbidden fruit in the heavenly garden, it was surely that of human judgment.

The questions I would like to share with you at this point are;

What are you condemning? What shouldn't be? What is evil, unjust or mean?

The exciting thing is that life often presents us with exactly what we don't want to be true and what we exclude (cf. R. Dahlke: The Shadow Principle). But if we exclude that, how will we ever become whole? How do we want to strive towards unity if not everyone first collects and acknowledges their lost parts? The evil, the disgusting, the cruel and the insane, to name a few of these unloved children.

We can use our judgment to doom the world as it currently exists or to see the status quo as an absolutely necessary step in the right direction. Or maybe even both, depending on the time of day and the media headline.

It's up to you.

With expanding love,
Your Misha

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Photo credit: Yana Rendon.