JOIN USJust consider these. We have bungled up an important official project. We have loused up while giving a live-demo of our company’s new product. We have screwed up while tinkering with some high-end home gadget. We have botched up while baking butter cookies for the birthday bash of our best buddy.
What do we do at these times? Simply justify our bad actions! This justifying malady, especially for wrong acts, seems quite in-built in many of us. At our younger days itself, this nature manifests in the form of excuses, that we trot out, for every wrong that we do.
Why do we often get into this justifying mode? Perhaps, it’s to preempt the possible embarrassment. Or, to circumvent the ignominy of being labelled as an incompetent nitwit. Or, to protect our image from being blighted. Or, to skirt those sessions of scalding rebukes and subsequent sermons.
Incidentally, we aren’t aware of the flip side of these feisty justifications. In Mumbai, I had a friend, who used to hold oil-painting classes. She had a student, who invariably goofed up his art work with unsightly blotches. Whenever she tried correcting him, he’d get fiercely assertive, justifying his foozled-up work. Slowly, she gave up on him, due to which he never perfected his painting skill. Apparently, while learning something, when we swerve on the wrong track, and try justifying it, too, we wouldn’t be able to assimilate the right knowledge.
In fact, at times, we even see people belligerently going ballistic, in the process of justifying their wrong acts, without realising their unrepressed aggression can cause unnecessary acrimony all around. This kind of fierce justifications can be amply witnessed during the road-rage incidents.
Interestingly, even while being with family/friends, we unwittingly keep launching on this justifying mission, even in piffling matters. And later, find ourselves being assailed by guilt assaults! Maybe, it’s time we realised that instead of embarking on these unconstructive/unproductive justifying bouts, if we try owning up for our mistakes (which indubitably is a more simpler process), it’d do us loads of good, besides granting us a great amount of inner peace/calm!