Judge Matt Michigan
I met Matt at a youth program for high school students in Michigan. He introduced himself after one of my presentations. I was immediately impressed with him. He was a nice looking boy but I was a little disappointed, when he took off the hat he was wearing to expose his shaved head. My first thought was, “Why do you have to follow the professional basketball crowd? Why don’t you just be yourself?” As we talked, he told me where he was from which surprised me, because it was the distance I also lived in. I asked him why he had not gone to one of the programs closer to home. He told me that he was going to three of these youth programs that summer. Knowing how much the programs cost I thought, “It must be really nice to have enough money to travel around the country like that. Many youth can’t afford to even attend one of these sessions!” But of course I didn’t say anything to him.
Later that afternoon, Matt came up after another one of my talks. This time I noticed his crutches. I asked him if he had hurt himself. He seemed to hesitate, but then said something that sent a shock wave through me. He then told me that he had cancer in his leg. He was wearing shorts, and I could see a badly swollen knee. He then said that the disease had also spread into his lungs. These words seemed to hang in the air and caused a feeling of guilt to sweep over me. I had misjudged this young man just a few hours before. I thought he was following the crowd because he had shaved his head, when in reality his hair had fallen out because of the cancer treatments he was receiving.
Then I thought of the three programs that he was attending that summer. I had misjudged him for being a very lucky rich kid being sent around the country to have fun. In reality it was a terminally ill young man who just wanted to be with other youth he loved knowing he probably would not be alive the next summer. Why can’t I quit judging others and just love everyone? I tried to spend time with Matt, knowing it would probably be the last time to be near him during this life. I made new commitments to treat everyone with love and respect and to quit judging. Later that fall I was reading a newspaper, I saw the obituary for my young friend Matt. When we judge others, we usually have no idea what they are like or what they are really going through.
