Woke up today and thought: just because you meant what you said then, doesn’t mean you still mean it now.

And I wonder a lot about what that means in relation to being a principled person.

I kept thinking about all the things I’ve said in the past, and wondered if I still mean them now.

I started considering all the things I said and meant then, that I don’t mean now, and whether that makes me a hypocrite. And if not, and it’s just growing up and learning, then maybe principles aren’t as rigid as we think they should be?

I worry a lot about being a hypocrite. It’s the most detestable trait in my book. Are hypocrites aware that they’re hypocrites? If they aren’t, does it still make them hypocrites? Or is hypocrisy external to us?

Maybe it’s a good thing that human in Arabic, إنسان, is a stem of the verb, ينسى, to forget. Our forgetfulness is probably our biggest blessing and curse; on the one hand, at some point we stop agonising over past mistakes in order to forgive ourselves and continue living—

On the other hand, it gives us room to repeat the same mistakes we agonised over because we forgot we made them.

And does this make it harder to forgive ourselves? Can you ever forgive yourself for your past mistakes, even if you repeat them? Can you forgive yourself for being absurd?

Why is Twitter fucking up the order of this thread? Ugggghhhh.

If hypocrisy is external to us, rather than something we’re aware of, then literally ANYONE can point at any two things we did, reveal an opposition between the two, and label us as hypocritical.

In which case, is maintaining principals an absurd cause? One that is innately meaningless but we strive for anyway?