A couple days ago, I slept through an important meeting.
After the initial anxiety caused by untimeliness, my brain immediately started rationalizing my absence. I was feeling under the weather, so it made sense that I needed sleep. After calming my frazzled nerves through reason, it dawned on me that rationalization was a sketchy reaction. After all, I had missed a serious commitment. But in my hurry to rip off the suffocatingly tight sweater of guilt, I convinced myself that it was perfectly reasonable to sleep through meetings when illness strikes.
This isn't the only recent example of me avoiding the marination of malaise caused by my own ass-dom. I haven't written in over a month, and when I got an email telling me to please please please write an article please, I came up with the ever-weak defense of writer's block and brushed the email off.
Another time, in a fit of sore-loser rage, I angrily threw cards at my friend. What was my reaction to this particularly douchey move of mine? Rationalizing by convincing myself they were a stupid cheater and deserved stupid cards thrown at their stupid face.
These are ever so slightly petty examples of me being a total asshole, but it's a real problem that a lot of us grapple with. The complex set of reactions caused by the juxtaposition of a particularly jerk-y move and the immediate flood of guilt often leads to excessive rationalization. This rationalization can be a result of the need to save face, or just because it's hard to deal with guilt caused by your own actions.
What I'm getting at is that we need to stew a little bit in the guilt before jumping to rationalizing. It's endlessly important to recognize our own heinous douchebagery when we commit an asshole move and to take steps to fix whatever wrong we did. In some cases, it's as simple as owning up to your laziness and getting back to work. In others, it can be significantly harder.
In summary: Don't immediately rip off that itchy turtleneck of guilt. Marinate in it, and try your best to fix it.
Meanwhile, I'm going to go apologize to that friend I threw cards at. I might have given him a paper cut.
