By: Jackie DeWald, LPC
When I was around 14 years old, I went grocery shopping with my mom. We are at the
refrigerator aisle, and my mom picked out a carton of eggs. The carton my mom picked was the ugliest
carton she could have gotten. The carton had holes and was misshapen in places. I told her, “Mom, no
don’t get those!” She looked at me and stated “Why?” and opened it to show me a dozen perfect eggs.
As cheesy of a metaphor as it is, it’s very true that we tend to judge books by their cover. If
something is misshapen, or doesn’t look the way we expect it to, we will assume it will be useless to us.
As much as we don’t want to admit it at times, this way of thinking can also extend to how we view
other people.
I had a friend tell me once, “You don’t know what it takes for someone to show up in the
world.” You don’t know what it took for someone who deals with chronic illness to run a quick errand.
You don’t know what it took for someone else who struggles with depression to get their child to school.
You don’t know what it took for a classmate to audition for the school play.
With the world being increasingly unpredictable, times are harder on all of us. We don’t know
what it takes for someone to show up in this world. Even if someone’s carton of eggs doesn’t look like
ours, we can all stand to judge it less.