#9

Daniel Cuevas-

I appreciate his gesture, this small kindness, but I pass on the coffee, decaf or regular, the bottled water and the diet Coke, and after he leaves I wonder how long it'll be before he's moved from the front desk into an office of his own, if he studied literature, art or film in college, or if it was business administration or law. Then I wonder if it matters, if I'm being narrow-minded, defensive for defensiveness's sake, or if I'm just making up excuses to justify my own shortcomings...
Don't prejudge, I tell myself. (Brown, 45)
And I think--there's my competition. That woman shaking hands with the man in the suit... Now shes only a phone call away from her agent who will nail down a deal for a million up front... Of course I'll be jealous but I certainly won't begrudge her victory. Until today she may have been waiting tables and worrying if she could make this month's rent, and suddenly, after ten years of writing, she's an overnight success. (Brown, 46)

In both of these quotes, James Brown is patiently waiting for his meeting with an executive in a Hollywood skyscraper. In his wait, Brown begins to judge people that he sees in the office. Moreover, we as humans tend to judge people mainly because we feel we are not enough or are jealous of other people. However, James Brown does realize that he is judging the woman and so he changes his viewpoint for a positive one. Further, he realizes that he is judging her without even knowing where she came from; what kind of hardships she had to experience to get to where she is right now. I strongly believe that we humans, should all stop judging each other and instead understand each other. Put yourself in other peoples shoes and show empathy so that more people would feel happier and less people would be bullied. This scene shows a little bit of change in the author, he noticed his negativity and corrected it by changing his thoughts to positive ones. In a past blog I predicted that Brown would be changing into a better person because of his realization that if he does not change he will die.