“Ponder not the faults of others, what they have done or left undone; ponder the deeds you yourself have done and left undone.”Dhammapada · Dhammapada · -300 · versetul 50
The energy you spend judging others is the very energy you could use to change yourself.
Watching other people's flaws is pleasant and useless: it changes neither us nor them. Turning the gaze on our own deeds is painful but the only thing that produces results, because that is where we have control. The critic who comments daily on colleagues' lives while leaving his own character unrepaired stays the same; the one who examines his own actions daily moves forward.
Judging others feels like doing something, but it is really an avoidance. It occupies your mind with the one place where you can do nothing. The Dhammapada pushes the idea further: it is not enough to withdraw attention from other people's lives; you must give it a job. Your own deeds and omissions are that workplace. Think of someone who daily comments on their boss's mistakes and discovers, years later, that their own project never moved. The energy was real; only the direction was wrong. And omissions count as much as deeds: what you failed to say, repair, or begin. That is the harder part of self-examination, because nobody sees you when you fail to do a good thing. The next question is what such a daily look at yourself actually looks like in practice.
Why it matters For the moment you catch yourself judging someone online or at the office: that energy has only one useful place to go.