Do you remember how excited you were as a kid when you learned to read books like “Clifford the Big Red Dog” or “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie” Or the library days in elementary school, and you spent the whole 30 minutes looking at every book and choosing the book based on what you saw on the cover. Maybe it had a picture of a princess standing in front of her castle, or a catchy title painted a bright, slimy green. or even a beloved character like Barney. We chose it based on what we saw. As far as we were concerned, that cover showed us everything we needed to bring it home. We never read the back cover or the intro! We just went by what we saw, and that picture often influenced our next preference and our suggestions to our friends. (That was how I fell in love with The Little House On The Prairie Series), And yet we are told, “to not judge a book by its cover,” and yet we always did!

And we still do! Except now, it’s not books we are judging, it’s people and situations that we “see” but don’t read too much into. We’ve all seen someone use a handicap spot, walk away from it, and assumed they didn’t need it. Many of us have seen someone swipe their benefit card and thought, “You can get a job.” Maybe it’s a single parent who heard, “You brought this on yourself.” But the truth of the matter is, we don’t take the time to “read” the person. We judge based on what we see and how it makes us feel, then get angry when people do the same thing to us. And often our judgment is wrong. I know this because I’ve had this done to me sooo many times. I got to experience this because I used a food stamp card. I was always told I could work, but I just didn’t want to or that I was lazy. I often felt ashamed that I needed help and tried to hide my card, and I would sweat like crazy when someone came up behind me in the store. I also hear this a lot from people who see that I still use the food pantry for help. I hear people say you’re taking from people who really need it. My thought is, how do you know I don’t need it? And I only get assistance from pantries after I have struggled, when in reality (especially in today’s world), I might not hit rock bottom if I didn’t wait. Regardless, I was still judged by what people saw. Had people looked with their hearts instead of judgment, they would have seen that I had just moved out on my own, that I did, in fact, work at a sheltered workshop where I was paid a lousy piece rate. Had they looked into my cart, they would have seen I wasn’t buying junk food; I was buying cheap food like ramen soup, tuna, milk, and bread. But we as a society only see what we want to see.

But imagine if we took the time to read the back cover, or took the time to open it up and read the first chapter, maybe humanity wouldn’t be as lost as it is. What would the back jacket say about the true author of our lives if we stopped just judging by the cover?