To each their own. But seriously, why can’t you just stop eating that cake that’s making you fat? Or, why do you keep gambling after losing all your money already?
People are not perfect, but the imperfections can grow or shrink over time.
And when a person lives long enough some of the imperfections can go out of control and manifest as a problem that’s very hard to solve. Such problems cause a serious challenge and can be debilitating, and eventually they can have long-lasting negative effects on the life of the individual and the people around them.
Here are some examples of such challenges and outcomes:
- Unable to resist gambling -> being poor or indebted.
- Inability to control food consumption -> obesity and related health problems.
- Bad management of feelings -> procrastination, broken promises, unfinished work, etc.
- Uncontrollable anger -> Broken relationships, low popularity, low charisma.
- Bad financial management -> overspending, buying more liabilities.
Such challenges all lead eventually to low life quality or worse; it could lead to imprisonment, homelessness, becoming handicapped, or death. And because the imperfections have proliferated over many long years, fixing them presents a very hard task, especially now that the brain has already build many habits and shortcuts on top of these imperfections.
Many people don’t realize the challenges that others go through, and they even forget about their own challenges. The idea is that to each person there are their own unique challenges, and what might seem as a no-problem to one person could very well be an extremely hard thing for another.
So simply telling someone “hey, you gotta control your diet, because obesity is very dangerous to your health.”, and expecting them to agree and do it the next day, is not realistic at all. They know they’re obese, and they most probably understand the risks and don’t like them, however, they did not become like so overnight, and reversing the outcome of a long journey through time maybe could take as much time as it took to get here.
Summoning the will to make a change in long-time habits, when life is already burdened with all the other unpleasant inconveniences and hardships, is not going to be at the top of the priorities list, for practical reasons, and not just because of a probable procrastination.
Let’s be kind to others, and remember, what’s easy for you might not be as easy to them.
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Related article: “Will Power is for Losers”