Why can’t we spot our own flaws?
It all began one night, when he woke up coughing. And when the man turned on the lights, he was shocked to find little droplets of blood splashed all across his pillowcase. And the metallic taste of iron was unmistakably still on the tip of his tongue.
Immediately this young man bolted to the bathroom and began rinsing his mouth out. The blood intermingled with the faucet water as it swirled down the drain. After cleaning himself up and changing his pillowcase, he was fast asleep again.
But this happened night after night. And after about a week, his worried wife told him he had to see the doctor. But he refused. He kept on saying it was nothing. He was too young to be sick. As days turned into months, the small cough progressed into violent fits of hacking and labored breathing. He would often wake up with blood-shot eyes, a piercing headache, and a bunch of red-spotted sheets that need to be washed. But still, he couldn’t seem to recognize that there was something seriously wrong with him.
It wasn’t until one night, he found himself being strapped down to a stretcher and shoved into the ambulance that he finally realized maybe something is wrong. But as soon as one of the nurses received the man at the entrance to the emergency room, she took one quick look at him and his condition. She already knew that he had cancer and wasn’t sure if he would make it through the night.
Like this man, many of us live life being totally blind and oblivious to the chronic and systemic problems in our lives. But these problems are often easily pinpointed by others around us; even within minutes of meeting us. And the major reason why we have a harder time trying to spot and identify our own problems is because we are the ones who have to live through the prognosis and the consequences as well. Therefore it is always easier to see other people’s problems, rather than our own, because we don’t have to deal with the fallout ourselves.
