Reasons
Had a visit from The Grasshopper over the weekend as I was sitting outside. He said, “Nature doesn’t care about reasons.”
I wrote it down but had to let it sit for awhile before I could make sense of it.
I thought about the absurdity of giving nature a reason for destroying it. “The reason I’m polluting your stream is so that we can have a place to put our toxic waste runoff that we aren’t allowed to put anywhere else. Also, it’s legal.”
Lest you think this is a rant about the environment, please read on.
A reason won’t gain you absolution. What you did is what you did; it’s a fact. Reasoning away the facts doesn’t remove the facts. It’s like trying to get rid of a tattoo. There will always be some kind of remnant.
Your reason doesn’t work on human nature either. Just because you won the argument because you could reason better doesn’t mean that there wasn’t damage done by your reasoned away actions.
We have become a reason based society where just about anything we do can be reasoned away. The people you are “reasoning” to don’t care about your reasons; they want acknowledgement of what you did, period.
It’s so easy to go into reason mode; we do it all the time. I’m sure it will never be eradicated and, frankly, that’s not the goal. The goal is to notice how often we attempt to reason away our behavior rather than acknowledge it.
This focus of attention on behavior rather than excuses creates a mindset of personal responsibility that we build on each time we choose not to give a lame excuse.
Just observe yourself today about to reason something away and you will know, first hand, how widespread the decay. We pollute our life with reasons that keep our offending actions in place.
Notice how quickly you can come up with a reason not to take action on this offense to yourself and to human nature.
Will you reason away today or will you notice there’s no excuse that works?
All the best,
John
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