Judging

So today I had this random thought while we were driving down the road. I saw this gentleman walking down the street very well dressed but just out of place to be walking down the street. And for some reason it made me think about how easy we are to judge people. The rest of the drive I was looking around at people and kept saying wow do we ever stop to think about how much we don't really know about people. Complete strangers could smile and you feel like you have known them forever... but we don't know what experiences people have lived, what good or bad they have seen. Right after seeing the man I saw two misfit kids on a bike cussing up a storm at all the drivers and I thought hmm did that man ever do silly stuff like that. We see a person in a suit and we think certain things.. but we don't think about the challenges they went through to get to that point in life. We don't know what good or bad they have done.. we don't even know this of our own family members. We only know what we have seen or "heard" and what has been selected for us to know.
It is easy to pass judgment, it is hard to read past the cover and the initial one paragraph summary. Just like a book, we decide if a book is good or bad based on the title, a skimming and reading of the back cover... but have you ever thought to read a book that seemed bad and find a treasure inside. Or gotten a good review of something from someone only to find out for yourself it was not how they described it at all.
Teaching kids not to judge and to give people a chance is very hard when as part of nature we select who we are going to sit next to based on what we see on the outside... who we will smile at, who we will talk to etc etc.
Yes we talk about judging and not judging in life.. but for some reason I could not shake that have we really sat and thought about how much we really don't know about people and the hidden stories they have to tell.