One-Shot Kill and How to Avoid It
Let’s just start with the term One-Shot Kill. It’s a term that I created a few weeks ago when, in my usual 3 AM brooding sessions, I realized how often I used to do it. To be honest, I still do it sometimes but I’m learning to stop. It can be a sort of first impression bias but it’s different in the fact that it doesn’t have to associate with your external features or your appearance or your possessions. This one is entirely about your actions and how those actions reveal your personality.
Truth be told, I have never shared this phenomenon with anyone and I haven’t heard anyone talking about it but here’s how it goes: One-Shot Kill happens when you kill a person’s entire personality because of their one singular action. I mean, think about it, not all bad actions mean that a person is completely bad. Everyone has done stuff that they don’t want the world to see. But yes, it does depend on the gravity of the action.
One other thing that I want to clarify is that people cannot be judged by one action alone. A person has their whole life to balance out the bad. What I’m saying is that we humans are very weak, we tend to make mistakes but we also learn from them. We have the power to rectify our bad habits and behaviors so we need to be more tolerant and generous.
First, let me tell what does deserve a One-Shot Kill. If a friend or a person you know was involved in sexual harassment, you can never support them unless you know that they were falsely accused. Things like these that are condemned by the law are not part of the One-Shot Kill category. What I’m talking about is more subtle and it’s something that results in little collateral damage.
Here’s what I was talking about: Smoking. I have always abhorred smoking and people who smoke. If I knew someone smoked, I was distant myself from them completely, in case they would one day offer me one. I simply label them as horrible humans being who are such weak losers that they can’t even understand how dangerous smoking is, I would mock their intelligence, their upbringing, and ultimately, their entire life.
Then, something really interesting happened. I saw one of my childhood friends smoking for the first time. I had always loved him dearly and had thought of him as a brother but at that moment, all that vanished. My mind was in shambles. My existing One-Shot Kill bias kicked into play and I began to judge him like I was a god. And then, something hit me: he wasn’t a bad guy, he was just dumb. And you can’t just discredit someone for falling into a bad habit, you can’t forsake them, and by no means can you label them as a bad human being, you’re NOT God. What you can do is be there for him and help them break that bad habit.
Needless to say, I did try discouraging him from it and I still do. I know he’s a great guy and he has an amazing heart. When I researched the causes of smoking, I learned a lot. And more often than not, smoking isn’t about smoking, it’s about a person trying to escape stuff, finding a way to numb their pain. Of course, this isn’t an article about smoking so we’ll stop with that now.
Some of the other instances where I’ve experienced One-Shot Kill is when growing up I was introduced to the idea of thieves and robbers. It turns out, most of the everyday thieves are not doing it for fun, they’re just forced to do it. They’re hungry and rotting away, they have no means of income. So try to see the real problem being the facade, go to the source of it.
I don’t know if anyone has ever experienced this before but if you did, I hope I was able to educate you about how the world isn’t always black and white; in fact, it’s mostly gray. So, in this gray world, be more compassionate, be more helpful and be more tolerant. Be the saint for those in need and stop killing people’s personalities.
