When was the last time you didn’t feel guilty about something? How documentary family photography helps eradicate a 21st-century poison…

“100% Vegan 0% Judgement”… Seriously… 🤣

I have just come off the phone with a friend who has 4 kids. And I should have counted the number of times she said “Maybe I shouldn’t…”.

I want to ask you when was the last time you didn’t feel guilty about something? When was the last time you didn’t say to yourself “I really should stop eating meat” or “Oh I shouldn’t let my child too long in front of that screen”, or “I shouldn’t really have that thought in my brain” or “I should really be able to keep up with my daily exercise regime”, or “I have read something online that tells me that I really should or shouldn’t do this”... or “So and so got angry on FB about something so I shouldn’t really do it either”...

Judgement. Whatever you do, someone will judge you for it. You just can’t win. The probability of doing something “wrong” according to “someone” is 100%.

Stopped eating meat? Fab but those prawns you ordered instead come from Brazil, that carbon footprint is huge! 

Started to eat superfoods? Brilliant but you know avocados are the less sustainable fruit you could have in your calorie-counted salad? 

Donated some money to UNICEF? Well done, but really how about helping a smaller charity closer to home?

This sort of narrative has got to be one of the worst poison for our mental health. And this narrative is everywhere. It’s on social media, it’s in adverts, it’s on TV, it’s in our very own conversations.

But why? Why is judgement everywhere? Why do we feel guilty about everything? Why does everyone need to have an opinion on everything? Why are we so polarised on well... life?!

Well, maybe there are a few things going on.

First of all, we know that consumerism can be driven by fear, fear of missing out, fear of not being like everyone else, fear of not “doing the right” thing. I’ll put my hands up straight away though, I often buy stuff I don’t need. From an extra pair of trainers to yet another photobook, I am absolutely happy to accept I fall for guilty pleasures. Do I care? Not really. I work hard, and if I want to buy something, for whatever reason, I will. I am happy admitting I am contradictory. I am human after all. But I am not going to be made to feel guilty about it.

Secondly, I am a firm believer that the main reasons why people say things, why they have certain opinions, has actually very little to do with the receiver, or the person being given these opinions. Often people say things to validate their own thought-processing, or feelings. They want to make sure their opinion is the right one, so the more they voice it, and repeat it, the more it has to be right. It acts as an anchor.

Thirdly, “having a stand” on an issue seems to be almost a pre-requisite to living. It isn’t, we don’t have to have an opinion on everything. And we can vascillate. And we can change our minds. And we can be confused. I am confused about pretty much everything in life and once I started to accept that, suddenly, I didn’t give myself such a hard-time anymore.

At the end of the day, I wonder if we need to accept that everything is about balance. Maybe we all have our own boundaries, and all do some things more than others and vice versa. I may buy an extra pair of trainers and a few photo books, but I try to do my bit for the environment in other ways. I know a friend who has never given money to charity but she is the best friend, mother, sister, colleague you could ever ask for, someone who would do anything for anyone in her local community. You might be a political activist fighting against a tyrannical leader in your home country but you haven’t recycled a single piece of rubbish in your entire existence and love every new plastic gadget there is. Your passion, your commitment may be completely ignored by someone else with a different passion and commitment. We. Can’t. Win. So why play?

What I am concerned about is that I genuinely think that aside from materialism and consumerism driving our behaviours, WE, individuals indeed put a huge amount of pressure on ourselves too. My love for documentary family photography stems from this concern. It’s actively normalising who we are. We publish family photographs of untidy homes because family life is untidy and that’s real life. We take photographs of a toddler having a tantrum because that’s exactly what toddlers do and that’s real life. We capture children who are eating junk food because we need to make it okay that sometimes we need to pick your battles. That’s real life. Normalising what we do makes everyone feel better. It conduces to less judgement.

Delving a little deeper, the “why” of judging and having opinions for me comes down to vulnerability-sharing.

I am a big fan of Brenée Brown, an American researcher who looked into the reasons why some people were calmer and why some more anxious. Why some people were more content and others less so. And the fundamental reason she found was down to sharing our weaknesses, letting go, liberating ourselves of “judgement”.

After studying her books and videos extensively, I really became much more at ease with myself. I started to let go. Let go of judgement. And more to the point I was able to see through someone trying to tell me what to do or advocating their way of life over mine. I can now understand that there is always a reason why someone says something, and often, as I said above, that has actually got very little to do with you. 

Don’t get me wrong, I can’t let go all the time. Of course, I can’t. In fact, if I didn’t care, I probably wouldn’t have been triggered to write this blog. Oh the irony!

We all have our own boundaries, we all establish our own balance. And everyone else does too. We all make our own decisions based on a million different factors and other people seldom know what these are. And therefore, for that very reason, other people’s judgement is very often totally worthless.

So in short: Let them watch that film, order a take-away, buy that extra pair of shoes. And ignore the rest.

PS: And the more we all say this is okay, the less so many of us will feel so bad so much of the time.