Evasion and Avoidance

Are the two words familiar to you?

I know we usually see or hear that words coming with the word "tax".

Tax evasion and tax avoidance. The things that taxpayers do to escape from their taxes. Tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance is not but both are unethical.

But anyway, this article is far related from taxes. Let's look at the two words and their meaning, without associating them to tax. Let's talk about it as the two things that keeps us from being successful, from achieving something and from accomplishing our goals.

To start this article, let me first define to you what evasion and avoidance means, then let's relate it to real life situations wherein it hinders us from the things that we need to do.

According to a definition in Merriam Webster, evasion means the act of avoiding something that you do not want to do or deal with. On the other hand, avoidance is the process of withdrawing from something.

Avoidance

I think this is pretty much self explanatory. We all know it's definition so let me just share to you how avoidance affects us.

Personally speaking, I avoid things that I don't want to do until I completely forgot about it.

• I avoid things I don't like.

• I avoid things I don't want to do.

• I avoid tasks that I think is so hard for me to do.

• I avoid responsibilities that would burden me.

• I avoid things that I am scared of.

• I avoid everything that I don't want to face.

• I avoid hard and complicated situations.

We usually avoid things because we don't like it, because we don't want that something to happen. It can be because we are just too lazy, or maybe we are scared about it, and a lot more reasons on why we avoid it. But the main point is that we, avoiding things, also means that we are not allowing ourselves to move forward.

We hinder our own success. Instead of facing that thing, we avoid it. And avoiding it won't really make that thing to be gone. It is just there, somewhere. And it is keeping you from having a progress. Later on all those things that we avoided will add up. We won't notice immediately until it's almost too late.

Until we are left cramming, until we don't have enough time.

For instance, I don't like our research subject, there is no deadline on the google classroom that's why I always avoid looking at it. I didn't mind it for the whole term until I realized that the semester will end on May, it's almost April and we still haven't accomplish a single thing while our block mates are almost done with theirs.

Now, we are cramming. I avoided it just because I don't like it and now look at what happened.

This is also applicable to life problems. At first we think that it's not big, easy to resolve. So we ignore it, we avoid it, until it became too big to handle.

Evasion

The word avoidance was mentioned in its definition so I must say that this is kind of similar to avoidance that I have already discussed above. The only difference that I can tell is that evasion is kind of us, delaying something to happen.

There are things that we don't want to face, that we don't want to deal with that's why we tend to avoid it.

One of the synonyms of evade is side step. By evasion, we avoid things through focusing our attention on other things.

• I always do my activities on the day of its deadline rather than doing it in advance.

• I always tend to do things that's a waste of time rather than trying to be productive.

• I always do other things if I don't like the things that I should do.

Evasion is like we are doing something but what we are doing is not the one that we should do in the first place.

For instance, I was asked to sweep the floor but what I did was to wash the dishes. I obeyed in doing chores but I actually didn't obey with the thing that I was told to do. And that results to me washing the dishes, then sweeping the floor afterwards.

Evasion affects us in that way. When we try to do unnecessary things instead of doing the task that we should actually do, we are just wasting our time. We focus on other things instead of focusing our attention on our own plate.

We finish other things instead of accomplishing our own tasks. We may think that we are doing something, and yes, that's true. But that something that we are doing isn't helping at all. Because just like in avoidance, the thing that we should actually do won't be gone. It's still there. And the more we focus our attention on other things, the more actual task that we have continue adds up.

Avoidance and evasion is not helpful. Doing something that we don't like is really hard and it's understandable that we have our own mechanisms to avoid it. But even though it is understandable, it doesn't mean that it's tolerable or that we should tolerate it.

Let's keep moving forward. Focus on the road and stop turning to the wrong direction. We might be able to reach our destination using a different direction, but we wouldn't know, maybe by using a different direction we might be too late as we reach our final destination.

We should know our way and choose that way.

No turning to the right and no turning to the left. Just go straight ahead. If we got tired then we rest, stop for a while. What's important is that we know our way, we focus on that way, and go only on that way. Focus!

=)