Self-Deception

My first thought this morning upon waking was "self-deception". Just the word, so maybe it wasn't a thought exactly, but it was there on the edge of my subconcious mind waiting for me to wake up so my SC could spit it into my conscious mind. Why was I mulling this over? Am I trying to deceive myself in some way? So now I'm peering into the shadowed nooks and crannies of my soul with a scrub brush in hand ready to cleanse away any self-deception. The quote of the day in my daytimer seems rather prescient under the circumstances: "Being extremely honest with oneself is a good exercise" says Sigmund Freud. I couldn't agree more, which makes me all the more wary of why my mind is circling around self-deception while I sleep. You'd think by looking at our culture that self-deception was a national past-time. Most people are tamping down thoughts and feelings about their inadequacies, their loneliness, their despair, their fears, their insecurities, their jealousies, their envies, their betrayals, their longings, their hopes, their failures, their bitterness, their shame.

The phrase regarding people who "live lives of quiet desperation" comes to mind, but I can't remember who said it or where I read it. It's almost a sin in our culture to not be happy or to think positively about yourself and your life. So we cloak our true feelings and problems from ourselves with false happiness in the hopes that this is really living. Yet reaching a point of true contentment and joy requires going through the pain of realizing you're a flawed, sinful, imperfect creature. Without that realization the only thing left is self-deception and that will never bring contentment or joy.