Everyone Is A Hypocrite

I can’t say with certainty that everyone is a hypocrite. But I’d like to.

Hypocrisy is claiming to hold moral standards or beliefs that your own behavior doesn’t live up to. In plain English, it’s pretending to be something you’re not.

And I suspect most of us do it.

We criticize other people for behaviors we also display. Somehow, we manage to overlook that little detail.

We give ourselves room to be human. We make excuses for our mistakes and explain away our shortcomings. When someone else does the same thing, we’re not nearly as understanding.

It’s an interesting double standard.

Some people have taken hypocrisy to another level. You can hear it in the speeches of politicians and TV preachers. Sometimes, the gap between what they say and what they do is hard to miss.

Compared to them, our own hypocrisy might seem pretty harmless.

And maybe it is. To a point.

Most of us have a soapbox of our own. It might be smaller, and the audience might be limited, but we still enjoy telling others how they should behave.

The question is whether we’re willing to look at our own behavior with the same critical eye.

One place to start  . . . is to notice when we’re about to criticize someone for something we do ourselves . . . and put a sock in it.

We can simply recognize it and stop ourselves from piling on.

That doesn't make us perfect. But it does give us a chance to understand people we might otherwise keep at arm’s length.

Fact is, we all have feet of clay. The problem isn't having them. The problem is pretending we don't.

And when we acknowledge our own share of the hypocrisy market, something useful can happen. We become a little less judgmental and a little more empathetic with the people standing beside us.

That's a much better place to stand than any soapbox.

All the best,

John