I get the feeling that people are relatively content with their own farts.
I'll be the first to admit that I've never really dealt one that caused me
to retch or run out of the room. If anything, I'm quite the expert on my
own gas, and it's clear to me when it's more pungent than normal.
On the flip side of things, I cannot stand a single fart from my wife. I
love her to bits but when she lets one go that irritates the nose, I'm
outta there. Surprisingly science seems to back me up here. A 1976
study
by some folks at University of Pittsburgh found that participants
generally rated their own farts as better smelling than the farts of other
people.
Now this writeup isn't really about farts as much as it is me trying to
link some random observation to another truth of life. In this case, I've
come to see is that we [humans] have
the propensity to show positive bias towards things we personally have
done or created. To name a few areas where I've personally experienced this:
The list goes on and the trend that I seem to observe in these scenarios
is that once we find ourselves involved in the process of creation or have
the scope of view of all the events that transpired, we inevitably have a
greater grace for ourselves than for others.
I've seen people be so quick to criticize dishes at a world renowned
restaurant and also be perfectly fine with some slop they've concocted.
Parents can be quick to explain away flaws in their children, but also
mutter under their breath about others. And who hasn't come up with an
amazing excuse for how they behaved in a situation while being equally
offended by others who've done the same. It's not a universal call out
against every person, but I've see it happen so many times.
Ultimately, the real danger of bias is not that we favor ourselves too
much but that we remove ourselves from truth. If you're gonna critize a Michelin restaurant, be equally critical of
your own cooking and food. You can love your children to death and still
know that they're highly flawed individuals. And don't be afraid to own up
to your mistakes, everyone makes them! In excusing these things, we miss
out on the opportunity to grow and challenge ourselves and the people
around us. Don't feed bad about not being amazing at everything (or
anything) because everyone has to start somewhere to get better. One of
the most important lessons I've learned as a married man is that having
the ability to change is fundamentally important for both parties. And the
ability to change only really comes from a posture of humility and
surrender to the truth.
Taking this one last step further,
show as much grace to others as we do to ourselves. Life isn't easy
and we're all on a rollercoaster journey of (hopefully) incremental
progress. The best we can do is to help and encourage one another rather
than making people feel bad for being human. Going back to this whole chat
about farts, the reality and truth is that your fart is probably equally
smelly to the next person as their fart is to you so we can all try to
make a smaller fuss about a little bit of gas (sorry to the missus!).