16 Struggles Of Just Wanting To Call Everyone Out On Their Bull But Being Too Polite To Do So

If there is one thing true of humans, it is that we are fallible, unpredictable, self-protective, ego-driven creatures (among other, more noble things), and we love to carry on with our attention-seeking, problem-avoiding, procrastinating, lazy, ignorant nonsense so we don’t actually have to face ourselves.

You do it, I do it, we’re all guilty in some form or another, and yet there seem to be people so steeped in their lack of self-awareness you can’t help but want to call it out. Here are all the struggles of being the kind of person whose daily struggle is not to do that, to save your own skin from familial exile (and other things).

Sigh.

1.

You know you can’t talk. You have your issues too. You have novels’ worth of nonsense that probably needs to be called out. You’re not unaware of this, which explains the hesitation. You can’t point fingers, and yet, here you are.

2.

“Polite” is basically just code for “dislikes confrontation / also doesn’t have time for it.” You’re just hoping the repercussions of their intense ignorance will teach them. You do find it curious how, after a certain age, people assume it’s totally okay to close their minds to anything that wasn’t acceptable in their first two or three decades of life and keep it that way, because correcting them is “not respectful.”

3.

You’re kind of confused by the people who try to pass an incorrect fact off as “just their opinion.”

4.

Most people who conduct their lives in a highly negative way tend to also be too fragile to hear feedback on it, even if it’s delivered very positively and lovingly. So any hope of even inching the self-awareness train along is usually futile.

5.

You’re always caught between having the strength to call something out and the grace to let it go, because you have none of the wisdom to know the difference.

6.

You are a master of passivity, and a lot of the time you don’t see it as a completely negative thing. It is often your source of sanity (though, admittedly, when taken to an extreme, your source of rage).

7.

You’re constantly wondering how it’s totally okay for everybody to talk behind someone’s back about something and yet let them carry on, spiraling toward self-destruction in their little pit of envy and negativity. (Everybody does this. Everybody knows who their spiraling person is. Don’t even pretend otherwise.)

8.

You spend half your time trying to figure out how people have such warped logic, or what it is they’re trying to deflect from with their willful ignorance.

9.

…and the rest of the time wondering what logic of your own is warped, reinforcing the idea that, yes, you shouldn’t start complaining.

10.

Facebook is a minefield for you. An actual mental, emotional, spiritual minefield. Perhaps more frightening than “opinions” that are objective fallacies (going by research or medicine or whatnot) is how many people believe them and believe them loudly.

11.

You wonder where the parents of the people who actually call others out are hiding, and how they don’t get stern lectures because of it. (Let’s be real. The only thing keeping you back is that your mom is on Facebook and she’ll see. We all understand this.)

12.

You are beyond validated when one of your friends complains about the same thing you were bothered by. You consistently maintain enough reasonable doubt that you could be wrong about it—that perhaps you’re being shortsighted or not hearing the full story—so to hear that you’re not imagining things (and yes, that situation is wild) is so life-affirming you can’t even take it.

13.

You don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. You’re trying not to rack up karma debt. You’re not out to intentionally cause harm, so you just don’t do anything at all because you’d probably end up causing harm if you really got started.

14.

You try to give a perspective to people who aren’t open to it, and because the people in question are so shockingly self-unaware, they reject or deny the idea that their most obvious problem in life is actually an issue. Hence the conclusion: it’s to call this out or let it go forever, please God help me decide which.

15.

Ignorant family members are basically Your Mountain To Overcome. You’re stuck with them, you’re morally obligated to smile and agree with them, and yet their Official Stances on an infinite variety of social, political, human issues are the antithesis to your soul.

16.

Just because you don’t say it doesn’t mean you don’t see it. And really, that’s what you should just say to everything: “I see this, and it’s not okay, but I just don’t have the energy to fully engage with the level of irrationality you are currently functioning at. So. See ya.”