Hypocrisy

Today I have been kicking myself in the butt. Not that long ago I was complaining about being judged by who I used to be, a man was judging me off of an experience he had with me 6 years ago and yesterday I found myself doing the exact same thing, I was judging someone by who I thought they were 5 years ago the last time I saw them. The worst part of this is that I wasn’t even talking to this person, someone else brought their name up and I immediately began to speak about that person as if he could not have possibly changed, even though I have no idea what he is like today. It’s what we call a knee jerk reaction, a reflex. It’s difficult for us to not think about someone as the person they were the last time we saw them but it’s something I really want to get better about. Hypocrisy is a dangerous thing but it’s something everyone is guilty of to some extent. How many times have you and a friend talked about someone who’s “shady” but you did it behind their back? Like I said, we all do it from time to time. Perfection is never attainable, the best we can hope for is that we recognize these things when we do them, preferably before someone else sees it and “calls” us on it. I was affected all night last night by the thought of what perception I had thrown out there about myself, what kind of man I had just shown myself to be. This morning I apologized to the person I had made those comments to, not because I thought I had offended them but because I felt as though I showed myself to be the type of person that I truly don’t believe I am. I had a momentary lapse in self awareness and I will have to work that much harder the next time. One of my faults is also one of my strengths, I am a communicator, I enjoy talking to people and listening to people. One of the problems with this is that I sometimes talk too much and it can annoy some people or I just don’t fully think through what I’m about to say and how some people may react to it. In the army we call it a “filter malfunction”. I guess I just need to work harder at engaging my filter and remembering that hypocrisy is an easy little evil to fall prey to. So it’s not just do unto others as you would have done to you, you have to also think/speak about others as you would like them to speak/think about you.