Self-Entrapment

“If a bird sees a trap being set, it knows to stay away. But these people set an ambush for themselves.” (Proverbs 1:17-18 NLT)

I am not sure if birds are really smart enough to respond to traps by staying away, but I have noticed humans who are dumb enough to fall into self-created traps. We often dig ourselves into holes as a result of poor choices. We associate with toxic people while neglecting those who make us whole. Materialism drives us into the slavery of debt. We fall into addictive behaviors. We ignore our health. We take everyday blessings for granted.

Most of us are smart enough to quit falling into these traps once we realize our dumb patterns of behavior. Unfortunately, we often ignore our instincts and fail to learn from previous mistakes. Most of the time, we cannot even bring ourselves to admit that we had anything to do with these blunders. We place all the blame on circumstances or on other people.

Every aberration benefits from an autopsy, and we need to be our own pathologists. Whenever things don’t turn out according to expectations, we need to take some time to do a postmortem analysis of the situation. What went wrong and why? What can we do differently in the future to avoid the same mistake?  Once we learn to discern traps, we can give them a wide berth. We are less likely to dig ourselves into holes. We become aware and alert to the tell-tale signs of a snare and stay away. We avoid self-entrapment.

“To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.” (Plutarch)