My Capacity for Self-Delusion

 

Bismillah walhamdulillah

All my life, I have shared a room with my older sister. The room would often be messy, and I often blamed her for it. I always thought of myself as a neat person. I liked to have things neat and in order, and I noticed that I was almost always the one who would eventually tidy up the room.

About a month ago, I moved out of my old room. I’ve had my own room for over a month now and let me tell you… It is a mess. I put things in order and shortly after, it’s messy yet again!

I had no choice now but to be honest with myself (and to apologize to my sister). I am a messy person. I was the source of the mess all along! I leave things in random places, I’ll put stuff down on any flat surface, and in the end it looks like nothing but clutter.

The reason this was such an epiphany for me was because of how convinced I was before, that I was the neat one and that the constant clutter in our room was my sister’s fault. You have to understand, I was truly convinced of this.

This just goes to show you what a huge capacity human beings have for self-delusion (as Ibn al Qayyim rahimahullah said). And that is very humbling. It’s humbling to know that your knowledge and awareness of reality is so limited, that the one thing you thought you knew about (you)… you actually don’t really know about!