They say confession is good for the soul. We’re going to find out, starting today, our first Failure Friday!

Last Monday, Hillary debuted our new feature, “Moral Mondays“, honoring those who put their words into action and act in an outstanding ethical fashion.

Well, that’s a great way to start the week – here’s a great way to end it. Let’s take a moment of reflection on the week behind us, and consider how we could have done things just a little better. We’re not encouraging needless flogging. No, I see it as ridding ourselves of bad karma by sincerely confessing our ethical failures, big and small (yes, I’m mixing and matching my religious references. Sorry!)

My ethical failure took place on Monday, and four days later, I still regret it. You see, usually I get a pretty worked up about censorship. I blog about it with some frequency, and I rant about it even more. Chalk it up to a bad day, general weariness, or just me being a bad person, but on Monday, I wanted to censor the world.

I was cruising through the websites I read most every day–New York Times, CNN, Huffington Post, Washington Post, etc etc–and checking out the comments section on each article. Now, normally, I love reading the comments section. I usually enjoy that part more than the article itself.

But on Monday, I felt like an explosion was imminent as I read all the snarky, angry, cynical responses to almost every article I read. Honestly? I just wanted everyone to shut up.

At the time it seemed as though for every comment applauding something as innocuous as a man saving a kitten from drowning (fake example), there were 20 more comments deriding him for what he did wrong, how he was ridiculous, or why he should have let the kitten drown.

I took it one step further; I not only wanted everyone to shut up, I want to do a time warp and go back to an era when we weren’t blessed with the digital functionality to voice our every thought. I ranted internally and launched a fantasy crusade where I convinced all media outlets to ban their readers from commenting.

All I wanted, for that one day, was a world where only happy thoughts existed, puppies and kittens played together and everyone’s opinions lined up soundly with my own — basically, the Paddy version of Pleasantville.

Don’t worry, I realized the very next day (after I got the sleep I needed perhaps), how insane my censorship-advocating thoughts were. And, after that scary lapse in ethical judgment, I am once again 150% behind free speech and opinion. Whew.

What were your ethical fails this week? We’d love for you to join us in our weekly bit of soul-searching and self-improvement!

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