If you’re being attacked, it’s usually good to defend yourself. Unfortunately, when you’re not being attacked (which is, of course, most of the time), “defending yourself” is usually very bad from the standpoint of making friends, being kind, or just living your life normally.
For instance, imagine sitting at a diner with a friend, and you ask them to pass the salt. Instead of passing the salt, they say: “It’s not my fault that the salt was on this side of the table. I didn’t deliberately put it there to spite you or anything, it was just like that when I sat down. You can’t expect me to automatically know that you’re going to want the salt and sit on the other side of the table every time.”
You would probably be confused, to say the least. They’re defending themselves as if you’d done something you didn’t do; namely, that you accused them of deliberately withholding the salt from you for malicious purposes. You didn’t, of course – you just asked them to pass it. If they behaved like this in response to everything you said, you’d quickly not want to hang out with them any more.
Their defensiveness, their paranoia about an attack that isn’t coming, leads them to damage their own relationships and thus, their own lives.
So don’t behave that way. Don’t constantly assume a defensive posture behind a barricade in your everyday life. Just pass the damned salt.
