Listen to how people explain their lives, including yourself. Almost every explanation is a small appeal. The traffic was bad. The meeting ran long. My boss is impossible. My parents never really understood me. The timing was wrong. You would have done the same thing in my position.

Clamence, the narrator of The Fall, sees the pattern clearly. Each of us is walking around with a private case to plead, and the verdict we are hoping for is always the same. Not guilty. Not my fault. A special circumstance applies here that does not apply elsewhere.

There is something genuinely true in this. Your life is specific in ways no one else can fully see. But notice how the specificity gets used. We rarely invoke our uniqueness to take on more responsibility. We invoke it to claim an exemption. Other people should be on time, but my commute is terrible. Other people should keep promises, but my week was unusually hard.

The discipline is not to stop being a special case, because you actually are one. The discipline is to notice when you are appealing. When you catch yourself mid-explanation, pause and ask whether the point is to understand yourself honestly or to secure a more favorable verdict. Usually the second.

See also: January 19: Judgment as Defense, January 26: Daily Judgment, April 25: Happy and Judged