“When you talk to people, do no weigh whether or not their thoughts are clinging steadfastly to God. A soul that weighs suffers harm.”
This Hasidic teaching, from Martin Buber’s Ten Rungs: Hasidic Sayings, speaks to me. When talking with someone, wouldn’t it be nice to just… talk. To quiet the voice that is formulating all sorts of opinions about a person– their intentions, their capacity, their motivations, their worth. There are so many distractions that arise within and beyond the mind that we are perpetually at risk of missing the present moment or failing to experience the experience that we are presumably having. When my soul is busy weighing instead of talking, experiencing, or simply being in whatever situation it finds itself, the harm is that life will become nothing more than the weighing.