Boi Growing Up

You ever seem to notice that when something goes wrong, people, or you yourself if you’re willing to accept that, tend to blame the other person or the situation? Like it’s very rare that we instantly find that the fault is with ourselves for that moment. It is impossible to that we can cause our own wrongdoing. We are never to blame. We are perfect.

Until we try to order chinese food and call the wrong number.

So I go to order some food for me to pickup at the restaurant. I call the number on menu thingy as per usual because I never save the number to this place in my cell phone. Also, I was using my second phone anyway. I call, an asian lady picks up, I say I’m placing an order to pickup, and she proceeds to ask me for my address. I, being confused, state again that I’m picking it up and she says that she heard me and what is my address. I give my address. Then she proceeds to ask my phone number. I acquiesce. I’m so confused, so I say “I’m ordering a lunch special for pickup, not delivery.” She replies, “You order chinese food? This is laundromat.” I respond with some variation of “Oh, wrong number” and hang up the phone. I’m now annoyed like “wtf? I call this place all the time.” I go to call back, looking at the menu, and I notice that the number I called was for the laundromat ad at the bottom with “FREE PICK UP AND DELIVERY” so that explained why it made sense to her I was calling for a pickup.

I felt so stupid.

During that phone call I was wondering what is wrong with this lady. Why didn’t she understand me? My request was simple, she must have been new. Notice how it wasn’t my fault that there was a misunderstanding. In my head, this lady was apparently bad at her new position. After realizing it wasn’t her and I’m looking at the menu, I’m like why is there such very little differentiation between the chinese restaurant number and the laundromat? Both numbers are in bold red numbers on the page. Anyone could’ve made that mistake. They need to work on their layout. Again, somehow it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t pick the correct number to call when I’ve placed orders multiple times.

Did my mind really try anything to escape blame?

But isn’t this an average response to dilemmas? To mistakes? To the plain old “damn, I fucked up”? “It wasn’t my fault.” “They caused me to do this.” “It should’ve been explained properly.” “If that person didn’t do ______, then I wouldn’t have reacted that way.” Or the age-old “god did it.”

It seems as if it’s a person’s first instinct to find no fault within themselves. As if there must always be a way to absolve themselves of any guilty action for causing anything bad. We always gotta keep our slates clean, eh? Only after a tiring attempt to displace blame do we accept that “hey, I fucked up” as our own. Trust me, when I finished placing my order, I looked over that menu again and accepted that I just wasn’t paying attention. It was my own fault.

Shit happens.

Sometimes we are the cause of that shit to happen.

I do actually think there would be a lot less tension between people if we accepted blame within before placing it outwards. Accept our own faults and shortcomings before trying to project on others. Just keep it real. We all fall short of perfection. I do see each of our individual chasms between us and perfection as what makes us unique.

I believe we are all equally far from being perfect, but in our own different way.

Til next time. Stay frosty.

p.s. Sorry for the language in this post. It seemed appropriate at the time.