“It’s out of my hands”: A gift basket of excuses

One thing this whole situation provides is one big bag of excuses.
Because we can always blame what’s happening around us.
For whatever we don’t want to do, whatever we’re not able to do, whatever decisions we make, it’s always possible to find something in the environment that we can say it’s because of that thing.
And for those who like to blame outside situations for everything that goes wrong- which is totally understandable.
Everybody likes to find some way to be innocent and blameless.
So it’s always convenient when we can find something outside to blame.
And this is just a magnification of what we always have.
I mean you can always say “Oh, because of the economy, because of the economy, that’s why I am so slow at starting my business” or “that’s why my career isn’t getting ahead, because of macroeconomical historical conditions.
Therefore I cannot achieve what perhaps I should.
So I can blame this environment around me.” And in that case, well, you could say, well, you know, that’s kind of a tired old excuse, because the “economy”: everyone can always blame the economy for one thing or the other, and so it’s kind of faded, you know, saying, you know, blaming something on the economy, blaming your lack of personal achievement on macroeconomics.
That’s kind of gotten old.
But now we have a completely new thing.
We have something that you can clearly say this is not something that was there before.
And clearly it has affected the situation, affected everybody’s ordinary life.
And clearly, even more so, it’s not your fault.
I mean, anybody can say that this whole situation, “It’s not my fault.” Unless you are somehow responsible for spreading it or responsible for developing the quarantine policy or whatever.
But even then it’s all part of masses and groups.
You can always hide within the mass and the group.
Even if you somehow spread the virus yourself, I mean, well you’re one of many.
If you hadn’t, it’s not like this all would have disappeared.
And if you were one of the ones who developed quarantine policy, well, you have all kinds of medical folks and political folks who are all signing off on this.
So essentially, everybody in the world can blame something outside themselves.
This is entirely, you could say, a natural occurrence, or it is at least something that is beyond any individual.
So no one needs to take responsibility.
This is something that everybody can simply say “Out of my hands.
This is a situation that’s beyond my power.
It was beyond my power to predict.
I had no idea this was coming.
And now it’s beyond my power to control.
I can’t stop what’s going on.” So it is really just like handed to us a silver platter of excuses to say “Here you go.
This is- you’re entirely blameless.
This is being handed to you.
Your life is being changed because of factors that are outside your control.” And so it’s whatever you do, whatever you choose to do at this time, you can find some justification for it.
If you decide “I am simply going to be lazy until this is over.
I’m simply going to entertain myself and do nothing else”: well, you have a completely- you know, you have a very special, unique circumstance that you can say “It’s because of this.” I mean, if you just decided, you know, some time a year ago, you just decided, you know, “I’m just gonna entertain myself for the next month or two, just amuse myself, and that’s OK”: well, then, it might have been a bit more difficult to justify You don’t have something that you can automatically point to.
I mean, it’s always possible to create excuses.
The human faculty of excuse creation is very powerful, and all human ingenuity and creativity can be applied to finding good excuses for whatever we decide to do anyway.
But now, everybody is being handed a free gift.
It’s like a free pass, that we can do whatever we want and then say “Not my fault.
It’s the situation.” So this is a very tempting thing.
It’s going to be very difficult to resist the temptation to use this as an excuse for why we’re not doing the best things we can.
But I find it’s interesting to at least think of it this way.
The next time that I start to imagine, just sort of automatically imagining how I can justify being lazy or whatever through appealing to the current situation.
Just remember that this is an automatic excuse gift basket that is being given to all of us, and it’s up to us whether we want to choose to accept that excuse basket, or whether we’re somehow able to turn it down and do what we really think we should do.

#excuses #freepass #easyout

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