Hiren Deliwala
By Hiren Deliwala
I wrote a few months ago about the urge to get even — that very human impulse, when someone wrongs you, to craft the perfect comeback, to serve up a satisfying plate of revenge.
This piece is related but different. It is not about being wronged. It is about something quieter and more constant: the low-grade judgment that runs in the background all the time, before anyone has done anything to you at all. The running commentary we carry about others, and about ourselves.
Let me start with myself, because that is where I have the most damning evidence.
I enjoy a samosa. Fully, completely, without apology, right up until the moment I finish it. And then the prosecution begins. You didn’t need that. You know what fried food does. What happened to eating clean? The interesting thing is that I knew all of this before I picked it up. I picked it up anyway, enjoyed every bite, and then immediately handed myself over to the court. The samosa gets a fair trial. I do not.
The gym is a completely different story. With the samosa, at least there was pleasure. When I skip a workout, there was nothing, just the absence of something I intended to do. And yet somehow that earns a harsher sentence. One missed workout becomes evidence of a pattern and a character verdict. The verdict becomes a mood that follows me around for the rest of the day. I have skipped a workout and somehow ended up in a full philosophical crisis about who I am as a person.
What I have been working toward is something I am calling generosity, specifically, generosity as a starting position rather than a reward I give myself only after I have earned it. Not the kind that lets everything slide. Not the kind that says the samosa was actually fine and the gym is overrated. The kind that says: okay, that happened, now what can we do about it?
Because guess what the spiral never produces: useful information to act on. It produces guilt, and guilt never tells you what to do next. If I sleep late and miss my morning workout, self-blame tells me I am undisciplined. Generosity, paired with actual curiosity, asks a different question. Why did I sleep late? Is there something I could sort out the evening before, so mornings require less friction? Could I keep better snacks in my bag so that when I am tired and passing a vending machine, I have a fighting chance? That kind of thinking is only possible from a calmer place.
The same logic applies to how I see other people. I am a quick judge. A driver drifts slightly in traffic and I have already convicted him. A friend shows up late and before he is through the door, I have assembled a case. A colleague does not respond warmly in the hallway and I file it away. The verdict is swift and the evidence is thin, and what I am almost never doing in that moment is asking what is actually going on for them.
When we hold some kind of power in a situation, and we often do more than we notice, this gets worse. I have been sharper than necessary with customer service staff, with waiters when something went wrong, with people who were already in a position where they could not easily push back. Not because it helped. It rarely does. But because in that moment I held the advantage and frustration got the better of me.
What I have slowly come to understand is that on the surface, a lot of behavior just looks like fault. Someone is late. Someone forgot. Someone dropped the ball. But underneath that surface is almost always a story I do not have access to, because I never asked. Getting genuinely curious changes what is possible.
Sometimes it reveals something I can actually help with. Sometimes it lets the other person save face without either of us making a production of it. Sometimes it turns out they just had a hard week and did not need me adding to it.
None of this means tolerating everything. Generosity is not the same as having no standards. You can hold people accountable and give them the benefit of the doubt at the same time.
The question is what comes first. If judgment comes first, the conversation is already over before it starts. If curiosity comes first, there is at least a chance of something useful happening.
Does any of this work consistently? My family asked that question, and would answer with considerable enthusiasm: no. My daughter’s cat would also agree. I still catch myself mid-verdict more often than I would like. The spiral still gets me sometimes.
But I am finding that even the attempt to start from generosity changes something, not always in the other person but in me. It is quieter. There is less of a mood that follows you.
The introspection, the problem-solving, the curiosity about what is really going on — none of that is available when I am already in judgment mode. Generosity is not the easier or weaker option. It is the one that leaves room to do something.
Even if the cat remains unconvinced.
Hiren Deliwala is a Charlotte-based overthinker, closet philosopher, and avid board gamer. He writes about everyday life, Indian upbringing, and finding humor in the chaos. When not philosophizing over chai, he’s usually losing arguments to his wife and, shockingly, learning from them. Contact: hcdeliwala@gmail.com
