The Convenient Villain

Sometimes in life, there is a person who has been a source of harm (real or perceived, intentional or otherwise). The trouble is that this person (or people, or institution) can become an easy place to assign all subsequent blame. They can become a convenient villain, on which to pin all troubles, failures, and disappointments. They can be a place to hide blame that should actually belong to us, ourselves. We can avoid any ownership of the wreckage in our lives because somehow, in some way, we’ve learned to blame it all on them. And in this way we are blind to the villain in the mirror.