I have this joke these days: if an alien was to come to earth and read people’s Facebook posts or Whatsapp messages, the alien would consider the earthlings to be very intellectual and very well behaved. After all, people post such amazing thoughts everyday on Facebook and Whatsapp that if their behavior was inline with those thoughts, earth itself would be heaven.
However, that’s not the case. People’s behavior has nothing to do with the thoughts they appreciate or the principles that they intellectually agree with. Most of the people would agree that dishonesty is bad, we should not steal and we need to love our neighbors. But do they actually do that?
This deviation of behavior from the ideas that we uphold is a universal phenomenon. You are not an exception and nor am I. It’s as if our intellectual self is a different person from our behavioral self.
For sometime, I’ve been trying to change many of small small behaviors that I show from time to time. They include things like office gossip, waking up on time, taking time for learning music etc. No big things. Just small things. And I’ve found it to be extremely hard to consistently change such behaviors.
So, here is what I am thinking. Even when I agree with something, there is a part of me that hasn’t agreed yet.
And here is the question that I am asking myself. Can I put more weight behind my agreement? Can I really really agree with something before I say that I agree with that thing?
Can I stop disagreeing with myself?