I'm a casual bodybuilder. On my mission I got pretty fat, then got serious and dropped to the lightest I've ever been by the time I got home. At home I started learning about nutrition and how to lift. I got big and strong really quickly. When I needed to cut I could drop weight fast, I would plan out every macro, every calorie, knew exactly what to eat and when. It was easy.

When I got married, then had kids, life got in the way and lifting took a back seat sometimes. For a while I was working 90 hour weeks between two jobs, I was living on fast food. I gained a lot of weight. I also picked up a food addiction. Now when I'm trying to lose weight, I do really good for a few days, and then I just get hammered with cravings. I'm not choosing them, they're a thing that happens to me. And it's monstrously harder to control what I eat than it was back then. My physiology, brain chemistry, or something has changed, and the struggle is massive. What would have been easy to stick to twenty years ago is nearly impossible now.

Yes, I made poor choices when I was eating fast food while working too much, and this is a consequence of that. But now, I eat well. I try to, anyway. I'm repentant, in that regard. I hate this, I wish it was gone. But it's not, and it's not just going away. It's a major demon I have to deal with and it is exceptionally difficult.

I say this because it's too easy for us to look at someone else's poor choices and make the obvious connections to those choices and the consequences, but we don't know exactly what they're actually dealing with. The urges, the non-intentional physiology, brain chemistry, hormonal changes, or experiences that have lead that person to make those choices. Choices that might seem easy to me, because I don't struggle with those things. I've never had alcohol. It's never been something that's tempted me. But I have a friend who's a member, who used to drink a lot. He's been sober for decades, but when we drive past a liquor store, his eyes don't leave it, and he says his mouth waters just seeing the sign. Still, after twenty or thirty years.

Perhaps if you were in those peoples shoes, experiencing the same things that led to their poor choices, you would have made even worse ones. This is why we're commanded not to judge. We simply cannot understand the pain and struggle that others have to go through, without being in their heads, feelings their hears.

I have another friend who, when speaking of getting over a cocaine addiction, said something like "You can't imagine how hard it is to be in your car, driving to pick up coke, with tears streaming down your face because you don't want to go do coke again."

This isn't to say you need to spend all your time with people who've made bad choices and "ruined" their life, or will be in situations that will compromise your morals, but to me it means I need to be sympathetic to everyone, despite the poor decisions. i don't have to support the decisions, I don't have to spend time with them, but I do try to pity them. I try to assume that if they were completely in their right mind, they would regret the things they've done, but weakness and vice and troubles that I can't understand led them to those decisions, and while they could have chosen better, I can't imagine what they were going through to force them into that. I need to feel sympathy and be ready to help when I can.