The tricky thing about deception is that when you have been deceived, you don’t know your reality is faulty.  Therefore, we must never underestimate deception’s power.  On the contrary, I’ll go so far as to say that I make fairly consistent attempts to investigate my belief systems, I’ll be it spiritually, relationally, etc, to ensure that what I’m believing is actually correct.  That it’s not just some self-seeking drive within me to believe something that puts itself against my determination to be healthy and whole, freely giving love to other people. 

But even with my conscious attention towards the propensity for deception, I still find myself having moments of “Oh shit, really?  Really?  How did I not see this? All this time I was (fill in the blank).”  Deception can come in many forms.  But the one that frequently gets my attention is the one that says, “It’s not my fault.”  We’ve all been there.  Something we did/didn’t do gets exposed and we freeze, cross our arms and the internal/external excuses flow:

“If only they had  ( _____ ), then I wouldn’t have ( _____ ).” 
“If you only knew what I’ve been through…”
“I didn’t really have a responsibility to that other person.”  
“It’s not really that bad.”

But the truth is that at the core of these excuses is the undeniable urge to protect our own, as they say, best interests.  And this is where we tend to become blindingly human.  Me. Me, me.  Me me me me me.  And then some more me.  Rarely stopping to accept responsibility for our own actions and intentions.
How does it make me feel?  What do I want?  Not pausing for a moment to assess the actual damage caused to another human being but rather brushing over it in an attempt to yet again get myself off the hook.  Because how could I ever do something so wrong?

Though, I’d be remiss if I didn’t flip the coin.  You see, whenever I find myself in a place of stunned revelation: I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming, I immediately turn my attention backwards.  This is when I sweep my memory of all content related to the said person and call to question everything I know about them in light of this new discovery.  But more importantly than that, I look at myself.  What is it about me that allowed room for this type of behavior?  And sometimes I find it necessary to review why this person had the place in my life from which to cause me harm in the first place.  You see, not only do I have a responsibility to respect people enough to be forthright and honest with them, I have the same responsibility to myself: I must seek and accept truth, no matter how painful the realization may be.  Was there something I could have done, some boundary that I should have had that could have prevented this from happening?  And though I do not intend to speak from a place of expertise, I can say that for myself, usually there is something I could have done.  There was something staring me blindly in the face, of which I refused to see.  But as they say hindsight is….

Though, for all practical purposes, the act of deceiving someone else is a form of perpetration, one must be careful to not assume the position of victim.  It’s perfectly natural and healthy to question how someone could betray or whatever the offense may have been, but it’s not okay to play the blame game.  What happened, happened.  It cannot be undone or erased.  It is what it is.  So when deception is called into the light, I choose to grasp hold of the truth it gives me in whatever way possible.  Because, what I really want is truth.  I can deal with most anything as long as it’s the truth- the truth about myself and the truth about other people.  Sure sometimes not knowing might be more comfortable and definitely aids in a desire to stay in a perpetual state of emotional inertia but that will never bring me the health I truly desire.  You see truth has the power to break us out of places of blind defeat, cycling in and out of the behavior patterns that are knowingly or unknowingly killing us.  And it’s revelation that says, “Though this happened, it never has to happen again.  And in my opportunity of choice, I choose to both do right by others and to do right by myself.  And if someone else doesn’t share the same principles and respect that I do, then they should likely find other more suitable company to keep.” 


Comments are closed.