Observation Versus Judgement

When I was in early grade school the teacher had the class draw one of the US states from an atlas. One boy who may have had some emotional problems (something I didn't fully fathom being under 10 years old) had drawn Alaska. He didn't want to bother drawing all the Aleutian Islands and instead just drew a big horn instead. I looked at it and had said "That looks like the head of an elephant" because it did. It had the side view of its head with a tusk coming out and everything. The boy immediately reacted by crumpling up his drawing in frustration and stormed off in a pout. The teacher of course scolded me for this and I was "in trouble". As I think of this, I realize this is the story of my life. I made an observation and it was received with anger and I suffered the consequences because my observation was misconstrued as a judgement. The judgment in this case was all in the boy's head because he was the one who was unhappy with the drawing. I only pointed out the obvious, and whether he was upset with his own laziness or perceived lack of ability or whatever made him decide not to draw the island chain had made him pass judgment on his efforts and responded in anger as though I had wronged him. The teacher reacted in knee-jerk fashion as though this was my fault, not caring that I was making an innocent observation. It was not like I said "I don't like your drawing" or "you did a bad job". That was all him, yet I got blamed for it.

I think how in life I make observations all the time that people don't want to hear because it makes them have to judge the situation in front of them, and if that judgement disrupts their current perception, it is my fault for making them come to that end. For me this ends up being litmus test for people as to whether or not we are going to be "okay" or not. My good friends have the ability to see this and don't take observations personally and sometimes even respect me for telling them. Still, I often regret opening my mouth because I really am not looking for trouble. I personally think people in general are very sensitive to hearing observable information that they don't want to hear, and the first instinct is to kill the messenger. I think smarter people are the people who are able to discern observations from judgements and those are the people who are able to really learn from experiential data and grow as people. Those who are caught up with taking that sort of input personally are trapped in a world of self-absorption and will always be held back because they not only will not want to hear how others see them from the outside, it conditions people to walk on eggshells and not give them the data that might help them because it is a honest perspective from another person.