Friday, June 12, 2009

Do As I Say...

I have come to believe that one of the keys to a happy life (or at least to eliminating a submerged but powerful source of stress in one's life) is coming to grips with the various hypocrisies that make us who we are.

Yes, we are all hypocrites. The problem is, somewhere along the line, we came to associate hypocrisy with some sort of moral or ethical turpitude. And that's a shame, because every one of us harbors several of them within us, like spiritual hazards we have to navigate around and past each day.

This overly-PC wave under which we find ourselves swamped has further pushed the concept of hypocrisy deeper into the moral muck. And we really need to get past this limp, lame, counter-humanist perception of what has always been a very real part of mankind, like it or not. Simply, we need to stop couching our hypocrisies as something they are not. They are not, and never will be, conflicting judgments, paradoxical choices, or moral conundrums. Those are bullshit PC labels. It's called hypocrisy, Mr. and Mrs. Doublethink.

I love animals and support their ethical treatment, to the point of abhorring fur, but I wear leather and eat the shit out of meat: red, white, and seafood.

I want the parents of criminals to stop whining about how the system is oppressing their criminal children, but know damned well I'd likely feel the same if it was my son in that system.

I look askance at parents who raise their voice to their kids in public, while being quite aware I've done the same myself, and likely will again one day.

I know, they're not heavyweight examples, but they are the kinds of things we all hold inside us. They are the things with which we struggle during our more introspective moments (or with which we don't if we're too insensate to give two shits), and as such vital parts of our compositions, we need to accept them as what they are: hypocrisies, pure and simple.

And if you don't like them, change them. Take a shot at more consistency. But you're never going to eliminate them all, so give yourselves a break and take solace in the fact that, despite what the PC pussies would have you believe, we all have them, we always will have them, and accepting them is half the battle in making them less the drains in our lives. In other words, you're a hypocrite, get used to it.