Maura Sweeney: Living Happy Inside Out | Personal Growth | Influence | The Power of Happiness
Jun 19, 2026 · 46 min · 10 segments
We're all guilty of judging. My story of the grueling initial experience visiting my future Polish mother-in-law at her home - along with her equally Polish sisters - for the first time. I wasn't…
Maura SweeneyHost
It's nearly impossible to live in a world of opposites, distinctions, variations, and perspectives and not find our judging something or someone, at least on occasion.
Judgment can serve as a helpful tool in deciding how we'd like to respond to situations, but it can also work to divide us and divide us yet again.
Only recently have I concluded that no one truly wants to be rejected, even the people who attack, offend, and otherwise repel those around themselves.
In a perfect world, most people would rather be welcomed than be judged and rejected.
Judgment remains a ticklish, ticklish subject because we often judge what we do not know.
Worse, we often judge out of fear, or might I say ignorance, because we just don't know.
The following tale called The Polish Inquisition proves how judgment works both ways.
We all try to keep our world in a safe and familiar zone, but when it escapes what we know, we place judgments on what's foreign to us.
In what appears an oversimplification, you can probably remember a time when you judged a particular food you never tried.
Maybe you made a negative remark about it and publicly condemned its distaste without even sampling the new fare.
I remember squealing in fear of calamari until I tried lightly battered and expertly seasoned fried calamari.
I still feel strongly opposed, even judgmental, about naked calamari with this-- that slimy creature with rubbery white tentacles and far too many appendages.
Don't say, "Oh, I would never," because you, like I, have already most likely been proven guilty.
What we can instead hope for in life is a willingness to check out what we do not know.
As we do, we might find something new to like, to learn, and even to appreciate.
Having a more open attitude before judging is so much easier and less stressful.
If I had known of the Black Madonna or remembered how to utter a select few words in Polish back in the summer of 1978, I might have even earned a hall pass.
It's nearly impossible to live in a world of opposites, distinctions, variations, and perspectives and not find our judging something or someone, at least on occasion.
Judgment can serve as a helpful tool in deciding how we'd like to respond to situations, but it can also work to divide us and divide us yet again.
Only recently have I concluded that no one truly wants to be rejected, even the people who attack, offend, and otherwise repel those around themselves.
In a perfect world, most people would rather be welcomed than be judged and rejected.
Judgment remains a ticklish, ticklish subject because we often judge what we do not know.
Worse, we often judge out of fear, or might I say ignorance, because we just don't know.
The following tale called The Polish Inquisition proves how judgment works both ways.
We all try to keep our world in a safe and familiar zone, but when it escapes what we know, we place judgments on what's foreign to us.
In what appears an oversimplification, you can probably remember a time when you judged a particular food you never tried.
Maybe you made a negative remark about it and publicly condemned its distaste without even sampling the new fare.
I remember squealing in fear of calamari until I tried lightly battered and expertly seasoned fried calamari.
I still feel strongly opposed, even judgmental, about naked calamari with this-- that slimy creature with rubbery white tentacles and far too many appendages.
Don't say, "Oh, I would never," because you, like I, have already most likely been proven guilty.
What we can instead hope for in life is a willingness to check out what we do not know.
As we do, we might find something new to like, to learn, and even to appreciate.
Having a more open attitude before judging is so much easier and less stressful.
If I had known of the Black Madonna or remembered how to utter a select few words in Polish back in the summer of 1978, I might have even earned a hall pass.
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