From the desk

We as people are responsible for many of our own shortcomings, failures and faults. However, this common malfunction generally gets explained away by the small, simple phrase, “I’m only human.”

But why is it that when a coworker, superior or even a subordinate fails at something, this individual, who is equally human, suddenly becomes something more?

We have a tendency to judge others more harshly than ourselves. Primarily, this is because their excuses are not swimming inside our minds, reminding us of all the obstacles stacking up against them that we would explain away.

All that we can see are the things these people should have done differently.

To us, these people are not only human, but super human. They appear to be something more, someone more capable than ourselves, who should not have made such a big mistake.

When I was in high school, I read about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and theologian who resisted Nazism during World War II. He once famously wrote that “by judging others we blind ourselves to our own evil and to the grace which others are just as entitled to as we are.”
We often forget this when we learn about others’ mistakes.

The news is constantly filled with stories of big wig chief executive officers (CEOs) who made a wrong move and metaphorically let their businesses burn to the ground. When the news enters the gossip-filled social atmosphere, the CEOs are blamed for hundreds of people losing their jobs and criticized for all of their actions.

At the same time, a schoolteacher accidentally teaches her students the wrong dates for a long-ago war that no one really remembers anyway. While the thought plagues the teacher’s mind, no one notices her error, and she tells herself that “we all make mistakes.” Yet she still condemns the CEO.

The magnitudes of their mistakes are different, but both are errors. Being in the public eye chastises the CEO, but the teacher’s faults are left to herself, allowing them to be justified inside her mind.

All of us should reverse our thought processes, start taking the blame for our own actions and try to help others out of their blunders and mishaps instead of judging something that we know nothing about.

We have the capability to help each other, so we should stop making excuses for ourselves and start lending a helping hand to those who might need it, despite their positions in life.

And yet, we won’t. After all, we’re only human.