post the twelfth

Recently I've noticed people having a propensity to hide behind various so-called syndromes and such. If you have a socially unacceptable personality trait, it's really easy to just say that you're the victim of some sort of syndrome or condition and have that be the end of it. If you don't pay attention in class or in conversations, you just say that you have ADD and no one bothers you about it.

Does this bother anyone else?

I've just been a little frustrated recently with people not being willing to step up and accept things like this. I mean no offense to those who genuinely suffer from ADD, and I certainly don't mean to limit this to medical diagnoses. In fact, I probably see this more commonly with people making excuses by citing personality flaws. For instance, I could point out that someone never does the dishes (I'm not talking about anyone in particular here), to which they might off-handedly reply, "Oh, that's because I'm lazy." For whatever reason, we assume that if we're honest about our character flaws, we're that much more virtuous.

Personally, I don't see it that way. A character flaw is a character flaw, no matter how open you are about it. I'd almost think that someone who admits a flaw like that and then resolves to do nothing about it is worse than someone who keeps it to themself. It just smacks of laziness to me. For crying out loud, get up and do something with yourself. There's no sense in justifying what you're doing. All you're doing is foisting your problem on someone else. That seems awfully rude to me. Take some responsibility and make yourself a better person.

I sure hope no one thinks that's aimed at them, because I didn't have anyone in mind when I wrote that.

- Optimistic.