Rationalizing Our Mistakes

Rationalization is a process of not perceiving reality, but of attempting to make reality fit one's emotions.
- Ayn Rand

Sometimes, we make choices in life and when the fruits of our choices do not meet our expectations, we tend to make up excuses and find reasons not to admit that we unavoidably made mistakes.  Most of us would deny that our choices, when made haphazardly, bring about results which we are never prepared for.  Sometimes, some of us do not want to acknowledge our short estimations as mistakes and just accept the lessons brought about from the experience; instead, we squeeze all our mental capacities to make our realities fit into what other people or society expects of us.  

Rationalization is one of the best defense mechanisms one could hang on to whenever a supposedly intelligent human being is faced with the Reality that unsavory events in the past could have been avoidable if a better choice was made.  The thing is, most of us, when we are faced with situations point blanc, we rely on our impulsiveness instead of our intuition.  There are some of us who are truly intuitive beings (having tapped into the Source at a higher level), yet there are some who believe they are and blatantly tell the world about it.  As far as I have gathered, most (if not all) of those whose intuition levels have reached Godly heights, they do not mention anything about their attainment or if they do, they shroud them with veils which only those who could understand would be able to decipher.  

Anyway, why is rationalization easier to do than to accept one's decisions as mistakes?  Some people say that "there are no mistakes, just lessons"; I guess some of us could never totally accept our mishaps as the lessons they ought to be and we would want to reason out why we made those choices, why we acted that way, so on and so forth.  When we could not even put up a rational excuse, we would insist that we did the right thing because we followed the voice in our hearts.  True enough, we could never be at peace if we don't follow the tiny whispers of our hearts, it would be like betraying our Souls but if we're never really humble enough to admit that yes, this journey we call human existence is indeed a world of trial and error, we would really do what Ayn Rand said: make reality fit one's emotions.

I am not perfect and I do rationalize some of my actions.  However, there are some things I have learned in this bumpy ride through Life: one must learn to surrender one's defense mechanisms and just accept that at one time in one's life, one made wrong decisions and has learned from them.