A quirky story I heard decades ago has always stuck with me and I think it explains why everything in the world is like it is.
Supposedly, a hypnotist put his subjects into a trance and told them that when they woke up, they should close the window but without remembering he’d told them to do so. Each subject closed the window shortly after coming out of their trance.
But when asked why they closed the window, none of them admitted they didn’t have a reason for their action. Everybody came up with a plausible explanation, like claiming the room was too drafty.
We do this all the time
We would like to think we are logical people who base our decisions on facts. But I don’t think that’s the case. Instead, we do things because we feel like doing them, and then we invent a reason to explain why we did it.
Sometimes we do this because we are lying. Maybe you tell your boyfriend you only looked at his phone because you wanted to check the time and then found all his cheating texts by accident.
But sometimes we manage to convince ourselves that our motivations are pure, even though they’re far from it. One example would be claiming you voted for Trump because you believed he’d improve the economy, when really you just couldn’t bring yourself to vote for a woman of color.
Part of an article by the talented
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