Justification

As I was driving, or more like crawling, down the freeway this morning I saw a motorcycle cop “fishing” for people driving in the car pool lane. He would stop and check his rear view mirror as cars passed, and every now and then he’d speed off after his “fish.” I’d watch him catch up to get a closer look at the car checking if they have two or more persons in the vehicle, most the time they did, so he would stop and wait again. After about 15 minutes he finally caught one, and as I drove by I caught a glimpse of the guilty party, no doubt frustrated, annoyed, and a little disappointed.

It made me wonder about this young lady that was pulled over. Doubtful to be her first time illegally using the car pool lane, when was the first time she decided to venture across the solid white line? No doubt that everyone else stuck in the traffic would rather be in that lane, but she was in such a hurry that first time, that she decided it was worth the risk. After all, it was only this once. I’m sure every time she was running behind it became a little easier to break the law. For some (and I don’t mean to pick on her, it very well may have been the first time she has done this, I’m certainly generalizing), they might hit snooze a few times in the morning and leave a little bit later with the thought in mind “oh if there’s a lot of traffic, I’ll just use the car pool once more. It didn’t hurt last time…”

This has got to be one of the great lies of life? We convince ourselves through reasoning, and eventually come to the conclusion that we want. We fail to properly examine what our conscience is trying  to tell us or why its so persistent. The famous philosopher, Immanuel Kant, explains that what makes us human is a need to “justify our actions.” Who are we justifying our actions too? We justify actions to ourselves only to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. For some amazing and wonderful reason we intuitively attempt to out reason our conscience and look back saying, “that was stupid, why did I do that?”  Maybe we might try quieting those “reasons“, and instead listen to the logic of our conscience.