Today’s Drifting Thoughts: Excuses

To be honest, today’s drifting thoughts post isn’t totally brought by me in the first place. Actually most of the points here are presented by Theen Gee when he was talking to someone else and his words really caught me because he really manage to crystallise this thought so well, and it really captures my attention since I agree with it totally. Anyway, basically what I have typed here is my own interpretation of the same thing (and should not be confused as what he actually said because his presentation is totally different from mine) and I’m just typing it in just to contain it before I forget it totally.

Anyway, in continuation with my short drifting thoughts post, I do mention about something regarding putting on extra unnecessary layers on top what it actually is. And later on I questioned about the topic of being overly self-critical. I guess let me just begin this drifting thoughts process with the overly self-critical issue. For one thing, most of us would have a certain perception towards ourselves, make it be dreams, goals, observation on one self or probably anything in relation to our own self identity. Sometimes, there are times when things will turn out to be something not really that positive, which can be either due to the fact that our own observation of certain aspects fall short from our own expectation, or because that we are so pessimistic that we keep on expecting something bad to happen. And when that happen, one of our own reactions is to blame, make it somebody or our own selves.

And going through all the blaming process, we often would come to certain conclusions that we have formed during the process, and the outcome would be either the true reason of what’s happening, or the excuses that we form so that we can defend ourselves from something undesirable. What I really wanted to focus here is the excuse part of it, as it is really interesting to see “how excuses are actually formed”? As we have known it (based on our own experience or from the definition from a dictionary), excuses are basically formed from our own defensive mechanisms. That’s one part of the equation, the second part is “what are we protecting?” It’s not hard to answer that one either: the thing that we are trying to defend is either something that is important to us, or it can also be our own fragile ego.

Now trying to focus on the ego part, now my question would be “So how important our ego is actually is to us?” From one perspective, the reason we defend our egos is that it’s part of our identity. That’s true to a certain extent, we can’t possibly deny that fact. But we do also have to remember the fact that our ego is definitely not our own identity: It may be part of it, but it can’t possibly be our identity. That’s because ego has to be built up from the external: The environment we live in, the people around us, their perception towards us, our own perception to them… it’s something that is actually something that can only be reality if nothing have changed in that aspect, factually it’s only an illusion of thoughts. Once a major change has occurred in our life, the ego doesn’t apply any more: All the perceptions that we thought is real will suddenly just fall apart.

To relate back to the excuse topic, sometimes we mistaken our ego as our own true identity, and expectations can be something that is integral to our own illusionary ego (do note that I did not say all expectations that we had on ourselves are). And when some realities just doesn’t fit our own set of expectation (note that it doesn’t mean that it’s not achievable, just that there’s a gap between our own expectations and our own situation), it is perfectly normal that we might get a bit disappointed, or probably hurt, which in turn trigger our sense of defensiveness. Sometimes it so hard to accept this gap, and sometimes we get so self critical that in order to protect our own illusionary ego, we come out with some made-up excuses in order twist our own perceptions to look as if everything is still in conformance towards our own illusionary state. (Or in another way of putting it, we put the extra unnecessary layers on top what it actually is)

Thinking about it, it’s actually negative escapism. We sought that escape so that we don’t have to face the actual reality, because we have got used to our own imaginary self, perception and situation. But we all know that it is it wasn’t reality, our own obsession towards our own imaginary state will drive us from avoid the reality, and it would someday make us closing ourselves into our own shell, resisting any changes that is needed to be committed.

… It is important to remember that without change, there’ll never be possibilities. Without change, there’ll never be improvements. In order to unleash our own true potential, all the challenges, hurt and pain is almost inevitable. In order to understand what is the most important thing to us, getting lost during our own adventures and discoveries are inevitable. It is to be known that true happiness doesn’t come from the outside, but it comes from within; but yet in order to fully appreciate it, you just have to go through your own journey in this external world.

[Edit: Cut the “Short” part from the title, I never expect it to be THIS long]