This article is classified "Real"
Sometimes you might feel the necessity to justify your actions. It is also
possible that, during your whole life, you never [1] find any reason to
justify any of your actions for one of the following simple reasons:
a) You feel your action was 100% justifiable and there's no need
to prove it;
b) You just don't like justifying things; or
c) You can't be bothered to justify it.
If you lean towards justifying things that don't need to be justified,
people will expect you to justify all subsequent things that don't need
any justification, even if you aren't willing, able, or simply don't have
the time, to justify them. This is a trap; never allow it to happen.
On the other hand, if you perform all manner of actions, and totally fail
to justify any of them, no matter how dangerous, stupid, or whatever they
actually are, people will begin to believe that you are a totally
irresponsible person who doesn't care about the effects of his or her
actions.
At this point, you could be thinking that an action is okay, so long as it
can be justified. Well, don't. It is very simple to dream up all manner
of excuses to justify any action you can dream of, and hope to get away
with. However, it is not so easy to get the vast, or at least significant,
percentage of the population to believe you.
For example: you could go to your neighbour's house in the middle of the
night and steal everything of value, while liberally smashing anything that
isn't, or visa-versa. A justification you might then give is that the same
could have been done by a professional burglar, and would be much more
likely to happen if you hadn't had got there first. This is a bad excuse,
and on no account should you try it on anybody whose measurable
intelligence is above that of a goldfish [2].
A basic set of rules is as follows:
1) Don't justify everyday tasks, like washing-up, or going to the
toilet.
2) Try to justify larger tasks which require explanations.
3) Don't even try to justify stupid actions that defy
justification, unless you want to be labelled a liar, forever.
Follow these rules, and you could have a whole lifetime full of happy work,
relaxation, and recreation.
[1] Never say never. Also, never contradict yourself [1].
[2] This creature has a short-term memory of only a few seconds. Thus,
by the time it would get to the end of this footnote, it would have
forgotten why it started to read it in the first place. To add a
further sentence would just confuse it even more.