Conscience; A watchdog that never stops barking.

There is a traditional proverb that goes this way;

Conscience is the dog that can't bite, but never stops barking.

It sounds like a mere proverbial line at first, but when you come back to it after going through a fair share of life experiences, you will then realize that the proverb makes so much sense.

People spend the vast majority of their life trying to maintain a certain lifestyle. They try to do things which they believe are in line with the appropriate social and moral order and they try to not get involved with things that don't align with their moral values.

For me, alcohol is something I've been avoiding for as long as I can remember. I don't take it at all. Maybe it's easier to avoid it because I've never had a taste of it, but I'm sure I will be getting a lot of earfuls from my conscience whenever I go against that moral rule of mine. The same goes for smoking. I haven't tried it and it's not on my list of priorities.

There have been some other moral rules I have that I broke at a certain point in my life and it's still an experience which I would gladly wash away from my mind. But you know how the mind works... I can't seem to let go of those memories and my conscience does a good job of screaming at me whenever I go against my moral virtue.

From my experience, it has become fairly obvious that we have to always fight an existential battle between what we preach and what we act out. Saying what is good isn't a big deal, but practising it is not as easy. That's usually where our behaviour fails us. This is why people say they won't do a thing but end up doing it when things get rough.

For people like that and anyone that has gone against his or her moral values, their conscience usually calls them out on that behaviour. It's almost like our conscience is a judge within each of us that we can't convince to pat us on the back when we do something wrong. You can lie to people and also to yourself, but try lying to your conscience...

Nah, it won't have any of that.

To a great degree, I believe that the fact that many people wake up each day and edge their day-to-day activity towards doing what is morally good instead of causing mayhem is all thanks to the fact that they have their conscience as a watchdog. Also, they do a good job of paying attention to their conscience.

It also seems like some people's conscience is more vocal than others. What I've noticed about this is that those who usually ignore the barking of their conscience will consequentially get to a point where they will lose their conscience, or at least dim it.

An extreme example can be seen when someone goes for his first robbery and gets called out by his conscience, but they become 'immune' to the whole barking of the conscience as they dive deeper into that act.

As far as I can tell, losing your conscience doesn't look like something to be proud of. Right? Let the little voice do its job in your head while you focus on living right.

Thanks For Not Missing Any Full-stop Or Comma
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