I feel really compelled to write this, because I honestly hope I never forget this. Hence the reason why I’m filing this under my ‘things to remind myself’ tag. I’ve been learning a lot about people behavior, and even if this is a generally accepted/acknowledged view to you, putting this in writing helps me stand firm if I ever see myself falling into this trap by “writing it on the wall”.
For honest people, deceiving others is wrong. Yeah, but sometimes even the most honest people tell lies (but I’m talking about the big lies, not small ones). To deceive others, you have to first engage in self-deception. You deceive yourself that it’s ok to deceive others. Over time, with practice, it gets easier for honest people to hide the unacceptable parts of themselves, from themselves. If you find yourself glossing over aspects not aligned with your core values, and telling yourself that “everybody does this all the time, it’s not a big deal, life goes on”, then you know you are wrong and you need to stop immediately. Get professional help if you need to, because wrong is wrong, and honest people who take dishonest actions justifies it to themselves in whatever way that lets them still look at the mirror in the morning and not hate themselves – but they absolutely fail to realize that they’ve absolutely fell into “the deep end”.
So don’t fall into this slippery slope, if you start lying to yourself, it will only get easier over time. Don’t. Compromise.
