Mea Culpa

It would be a lie to say that I’ve never felt like a hypocrite. I distinctly remember thinking that if ever there was a lady that liked me more then I liked her, and I had no desire to pursue a relationship with her, I would be as honest as I could with her and let her down as easily as possible. The reason why I said such a thing was because once I liked a lady much more then she liked me and she put me down; hard. Can you guess what happened when it was my turn to gently put aside the feelings of a young lady? Now I’m not as foul and shallow of a person as to be needlessly cruel, but I didn’t let her down easy. I lied to her. I told her she was pretty when I didn’t think she was and then I simply stopped talking to her. I ignored her, and the few times I did speak with her I was so disinterested that she quickly stopped trying to initiate conversation with me. I had done the very thing I never intended to do. I was not kind to that young lady and I was a hypocrite to boot. The question now though, is whether or not my actions were the result of a character flaw, or if merely being human was my failure.

I would consider myself a student of human nature, and in my studies I have found out a few things that are common amongst humans. Chief among them, as far as this essay is concerned, is the pattern of humans never blaming themselves for doing bad things. Humans will stretch logic to its breaking point to rationalize why they had to do things such as murder, robbery, or even rape. In this manner people can do things they would never normally do, for they believe, for whatever reason, that they are doing the right thing, or rather, the necessary thing. But this is only occurs after the fact, one must first do a hypocritical action in order to rationalize it.

So what is it that drives people to do something that is blatantly against whatever moral stance they have to begin with? After a little bit of research, it would seem that emotion is the main culprit for the moral corruption of humanity. Well, maybe I’m playing up the drama of it, but it is true that emotions do cause people to act, sometimes, far from rational. History, as well as all of our lives, is ripe with examples of this. I’m sure that all of us have been angry with someone and said things we shouldn’t have said, done things that we shouldn’t have done. The same can be said for many other emotions, like fear (not just fear of danger or harm), jealousy, love, even lust.

Don’t misunderstand me though. Even though emotions can cause things to get way out of hand, and often cause situations to escalate beyond our control, that doesn’t mean that they are bad things. Not entirely anyways. I mean, humans are emotional creatures and emotions are a necessary part of our lives, like it or not. The important thing to remember is that we need to keep some measure of control over our emotions and well, let the good times roll, as they say.

So when it’s all said and done, I suppose that my character is only partly to blame for my hypocrisy, the rest of the blame belongs to the emotional nature of humanity. Rationally, this makes sense, but personally, I feel that I should have been a stronger person, but everything looks different in hindsight.

Quote of the post: “It’s just emotion that’s taking me over, tied up in sorrow, lost in my soul.” - The Bee Gees from the song Emotion