Come out of the prison of self-righteousness and banish stress from your life

Human beings are a funny species. They have many considerations at any given time floating in their heads, all clamoring for priority attention and this gives rise to errors in judgment and decisions. If the error is not of great importance like picking up the wrong file for a meeting, it can be rectified and the error is soon forgotten and coolly slips into oblivion. But often the error is of such circumstantial importance with many others involved where there is no escaping the hullabaloo created in the form of a “situation” and a serious embarrassment is given rise to. It is in these cases that the human creativity comes into play. I give you here a situation to sort out.

In a criminal case, the accused needed to be somewhere else – a marriage in the family – on the date he was to be in court. His lawyer assured him that she would be able to handle the situation with ease by asking for another date for the appearance on the ground of ill health and that there would be nothing to worry. So the accused merrily went on with his life. Later in the day he found that the judge simply would have nothing to do with the lawyer’s pleas and had issued a non-bailable warrant against him. Nothing could be worse as this could mean also cancellation of his bail. How would you handle it?

The young lady lawyer in question showed courage and presence of mind that was commendable. The very next day, she made another plea to the judge in the presence of the accused and pleaded for clemency stating that it was all her fault. She had misinformed the accused erroneously of the date and that he should not be punished for no fault of his. On this the judge being a woman too, took a lenient view and the NBW was cancelled and the accused began breathing again and his respect of the lawyer went up one notch.

When in error few show this courage to come out clean or take it on themselves to help somebody out. Our personal agendas normally win over the need to go beyond our puny selves. It is such a sad reflection on this superior race that we profess to be. Humans being what they are would normally opt for first obfuscating the matter in such a way that in the confusion the subject gets carpeted over. If this does not work, they look for plausible excuses however far-fetched they may be and as a last resort for a scapegoat if one is conveniently at hand. This is very easy to understand. A certain amount of narcissism is in all of us. The element of vanity does not allow us to present ourselves as we are. We want to be seen as bright, capable, successful and master of the situation and will generally go to long lengths to put up a great show. At least that is what we think we are doing.

In the heart of hearts everybody is fully aware of his/her errors and shortcomings. To hide it is our first priority even though quite often we know that lip-service is all we are getting and nobody is fooled. But we all continue with the charade. After all being clever is more important than being accurate, sincere and honest. In the process we complicate situations and wherever we are in authority we can even harm others. This is so pitiful.

Owning up errors would in my opinion only make others see our greatness and our magnamity. We have been brought up on stories of honesty and its eventual huge recompenses yet we are afraid to implement this attitude in our lives. You would have certainly heard of the story of George Washington and Harishchandra. Don’t you believe in them?

So what keeps us back? One, I suppose is the need to be seen in a good light alone. The other is that we want the world to be reasonable and do things our way; therefore it will not do to be remotely seen as an error-prone person. We have created an image of ourselves and we will always go out the whole hog to make sure that others see us that way. It is a prison of our own making. This prison brings us stress and worries which we could well do without.

Those who are happy in their skin could never be bothered. Their attitude is always towards accepting their error and swiftly going on to with their lives. If an apology is needed, it is sincerely made and done with. Apologies have a distinct property of diffusing explosive situations and smoothing out any misunderstandings and taking the wind out of the sail of other’s indignation.

How many of us have the courage to own up? Why do we still continue to point fingers? Are we not evolving or learning from our experiences and education? I wonder.

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PK is a teacher of languages/communication, counsellor and a businessman active in 6 countries. He combines his knowledge of life with his education in management, applied psychology and occult psychology from his time in The Ashram in Pondicherry and assists aspiring managers to reach their next level. Please visit http://sites.google.com/site/pkcentreforchange/Home