Imagine
You, a male, are shouting at your wife/girlfriend in the middle of the market. Almost getting physically abusive.
An observer, draws the courage to come up to you and says, “you do know you should be respectful towards women?”
At that moment, it strikes you that this person is right.
You are being a jerk. When you know you shouldn’t.
It isnt the right thing to do
You take this person’s advice – apologize to your wife/girlfriend for your behavior and promise to sort it out through meaningful mature dialogue
And you move on
Let me add a twist
What if, somehow, moments before this person approached you, to show you the mirror, you got to know that he is a convicted rapist, who has served his sentence.
Most likely, your reaction then, to his statement would be
“Well, that a bit rich coming from you, jackass!”
Now take this rather unlikely situation and see how this happens EVERYDAY to all of us
When we dismiss someone’s feedback, feedback that we know is true, just because we also know that the giver is guilty of committing the same crime?
As if the crime didn’t happen
“Don’t commit fraud”
“Well, what about when you committed it?
“Spend more time with your loved ones”
“Why dont you start by doing it first?”
“Why dont you quit your job if you are so miserable?”
“How come you are still at your job?”
“I dont think you should do this”
“How come you didn’t feel the same when you did this?”
The source of true feedback, doesn’t make the feedback irrelevant
Stop shooting the messenger!
Absolutely loved this one.
I also often think along these lines.
We often fail to see that each one of us is black and white and not ‘Black’ OR ‘White’. Hence, being guilty of ‘black’ does not make the ‘white’ irrelevant.
Absolutely agree. It’s true in simpler situations too. Me doing something bad at earlier times should not be an excuse for someone to do it now. I was wrong then. You are wrong now. The virtue of the action does not change.