Someone snaps at you and then blames the weather, personal issues, insomnia, the load of life, the pressure. You are mean and unkind and justify it by what happened to you, what you’ve been through or are going through, your illness, your current situation, your economic, emotional or any other issue. Don’t identify yourself with your problems! If you do they will slowly become a part of your character, the waters will get murkier once you forget where to draw the line where the problem ends and you begin.

But we do this, we allow things to consume us and then demand special treatments and benefits for it, little by little starting to believe we’re entitled to benefits or leniencies for it and the problem becomes a crutch to hide behind, something you’re not even trying to solve any more because it’s become so deeply integrated into who you are that it perversely starts to feel good, becomes an inside force obscuring what is right. You are not your illness, you are not your condition or this specific set of current circumstances. You’re not your messy family life, your failing relationship, your depression, your fears, your insecurities. None of this excuses you from behaving like a decent human being, a good mother, father, sister, friend, companion, coworker… It doesn’t relieve you of being civil, kind and opened. There is no special treatment. Life is life with all the twists and turns that will lift you and drag you through the mud. You are not that mud on your face; you’re the person behind it. So don’t even go there, to that place where you believe you deserve something just because this or that happened to you, you’ll get sucked in and confused and once the problem gets into your head in a way where it consumes you, you’re in deep trouble, on a slippery slope of learnt helplessness and playing the victim.

You decide what realm of catastrophe is applicable in each and every event and situation, and by it the scope you’ll allow it to mutate and warp you. Yes, there may be something wrong now, there very rarely isn’t, but there is also a lot of right going on. Focus, and the choice where to put it, are free tools, use them. You don’t get to be pardoned for being a jerk… no matter what happened to you.