Defensiveness is not a Virtue

I grew up in the Land of Defensiveness.

The competition was stiff.  Avoidance of embarrassment was at the root of our protective posturing. Winning meant a brief, yet fleeting feeling of superiority. When failure was immanent, last-resort tactics like “the verbal smack-down” worked. Objective destroyed.

It was a high-stakes game that we played in the Land of Defensiveness. Or so we thought.

I have been looking at how, when, what, who, and why I resort to defensiveness. I would love to expound upon my glorious victory over this self-involved self-preservation tactic to the nth degree way of living, but that’s not my reality.

I am on the path to figuring some of it out. It’s a goal. Slowly, I am seeing my defensive actions for what they are: roadblocks to learning, stalwarts to moving ahead, emotionally stilted and socially blunted coping mechanisms.

The hardest part of stripping myself of defensiveness is laying open a vulnerability that means I might have to face a reality that I don’t particularly like. Part of that reality is knowing that I am not the smartest, the wisest, nor the best. It may mean that people don’t like me. Worse yet, it may require me to review, rethink, and rework.

There are loads of examples I could share with you that demonstrate how I’ve been a target, why I sometimes get defensive, what was the resulting outcome. But then I’d be writing a defensive blog post about defensiveness.

So I simply want to say that defensiveness is not a virtue, it’s a choice. There are costs and there are benefits, so choose wisely.

Or you may end up living in the Land of Defensiveness and believe me when I say this, you don’t want to live there.