-- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
Paying close attention to detail and desiring everything to be in its right place is the most understandable of character flaws as long as it is confessed as such. The one who wants everything to be just right, but knows enough to apologize for it when it becomes overbearing or inconvenient to others is readily forgiven. It's easy to give a pass to someone doing their best to see that details are not dropped or duties left undone.
However, this same attention to detail when worn as a badge of honor is intolerable. Few things are less pardonable than being looked down upon by someone who is upset at you for not looking up to them. Fastidiousness in this form is high pride and rubs everyone wrong. Few can find it in themselves to overlook or forgive the audacity that requires an apology from them.
Fastidiousness then, as Chesterton points out, is forgivable as a vice, but intolerable as a virtue. We forgive the one who agrees with its flaws, but resist the one who sees only ours.
Paying close attention to detail and desiring everything to be in its right place is the most understandable of character flaws as long as it is confessed as such. The one who wants everything to be just right, but knows enough to apologize for it when it becomes overbearing or inconvenient to others is readily forgiven. It's easy to give a pass to someone doing their best to see that details are not dropped or duties left undone.
However, this same attention to detail when worn as a badge of honor is intolerable. Few things are less pardonable than being looked down upon by someone who is upset at you for not looking up to them. Fastidiousness in this form is high pride and rubs everyone wrong. Few can find it in themselves to overlook or forgive the audacity that requires an apology from them.
Fastidiousness then, as Chesterton points out, is forgivable as a vice, but intolerable as a virtue. We forgive the one who agrees with its flaws, but resist the one who sees only ours.
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