Judge and Jury

Have you ever misjudged someone?

As in, really misjudged them?

And afterwards you realized how inaccurate you were?

I did this recently. It felt innocent enough, but in the end, I was way off.

My boyfriend and I were in port on a cruise, heading back to the ship around 9:00 pm in the evening. It was about 15 minutes before all-aboard, so the pier was deserted. Still light out, so we paused on the dock to take one more selfie with the ship behind us. As we stood there, a man walking by said, “Would you like me to take your picture?”

He had a backwards-on baseball cap over wayward hair, tattooed and muscular arms poking out from a sleeveless shirt, torn jeans, and sneakers. He was alone. An odd figure to be there at that time. 

After a quick pause, my boyfriend and I both said, “No thanks.” 

You know how when someone offers to take your picture that sometimes you say yes, and other times, you say no? 

This time it was a hard no. The guy was out of place. Even suspicious—I didn’t want to give him my phone. But I pointed to my boyfriend and said, “He has long arms,” hinting that we could get a decent picture by ourselves, and we laughed it off.

The guy nodded and kept walking. 

My boyfriend and I then said to each other, “I wonder where he is going. Maybe a dock worker?” 

He did not look like a cruise passenger. We agreed that dock worker made the most sense because the ship would be taking off soon and they needed some strong hands on land to assist.

Later that night though, we would learn who he was.

We were in the theater on the ship, watching the production “Crystallize.” My boyfriend recognized him right away and nudged me. The potential photographer guy was one of the ballet dancers!

His beard was now trimmed, hair slicked cleanly back, and he was leaping and gliding about the stage in fitted leggings, a central member grounding the troupe.

Whoa!!

How did I mistake a ballet dancer for a dock worker?

It made me wonder what else I get wrong without knowing it.

We see this incredible world through our feeble, human eyes. We think we have 20/20 vision. But our own unconscious bias and imperfect minds rarely see things as they truly are.

Now, forget dock worker. Some folks might even judge a man for being a ballet dancer. On stage though, he was captivating. Strong and muscular, yet graceful and sure-footed.

It’s not just others that we judge though. We often don’t see ourselves as who we truly are. When I look in the mirror, I see a woman in her mid-fifties with tired eyes, greying hair, and flabby arms. I see a soft belly, and a middle-aged woman who has not accomplished all she dreamed of when she was a kid. 

I see my own dock worker in the mirror. 

But I, too, studied ballet from age 6 to 13. There was once a Can-Can girl in me. A tap dancer. Yet I rarely touch that light-on-her feet classical ballerina inside of me.

At the time of this trip, our ship was in the North Sea. We were a hop, skip, and a jump from the land of world-renowned poet W.B. Yeats. And Yeats once wrote, “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

We are surrounded by magic. But we can’t always see it.

What magical things you be missing? Where might your own senses be sharpened?

And what ballerina inside of you might you be missing?

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