Justification.

It seems to be human nature to want to justify our own behavior with excuses, while excoriating another person for theirs. We make judgements about how someone should act, dress, think, pray, or even work the program, and then set them at a distance from ourselves with this tidy little labelling that drops them into a category of "not like me."

We assure ourselves and others that we'd never do that, would you?

It requires considerable, sustained effort to see each person we run into in our daily round, as a child of God. Most of us have to work very hard to shut off that internal measuring system which is continually judging other people for what we perceive to be flaws, obvious or assumed. If we don't learn to shut it down, or at least reduce the volume, we keep our world small, controlled, and stagnant.

I have wrestled with this aspect of my personality since I was new to program, and even though I've come a long way from the person I was way back when, it still comes up for me. I will be congratulating myself for my tolerance, not aware that over here, in the shadows, I'm doing the same thing again - setting myself up as the authority on how another person should behave, and if they don't, dismissing them.

Some folks rub us the wrong way - those most like sandpaper to my psyche, are those who share my own character defects. Seeing them arrayed in full colour, like a fall banquet, means I cannot pretend that they are not just as annoying and irritating as the character defects I don't happen to own.

I have a choice in this instance - I can squirm and writhe with discomfort, push that knowledge away with heated denials, or I can sigh and accept this as a lovely moment of clarity, delivered by my Higher Power, for my sure and certain benefit.