The guilty lights

   Some people seem to be very good liars, while others are not. I think that I'm fairly adept at being able to fool others, but I usually pay for my deceptions with feelings of guilt and a quick plummeting of whatever sense of self worth I had managed to acquire before the lie. I really can't say what abilities make up a good liar, but it certainly appears that if one is going to do something wrong, it's would be best not to advertise it.
   If you have just robbed a bank or assaulted someone, it would probably be ill advised to approach a police officer to tell them that you have not done anything wrong. You would be calling attention to yourself, and a deception relies on, it seems to me, a high degree of anonymity. The more you try to convince a person that thinks you are lying that you are not, the more of a liar you appear.
   I find it very interesting that car owners tend to put on their hazard lights when they are parked illegally. I understand that this is ostensibly done when a car is double parked in the road to warn other drivers that the car in question is in fact stopped, and thus communicates to other drivers that they should go around it. If the vehicle is stopped in an illegal parking place, such as a no stopping zone, the lights seem to be communicating that the car's operator is only parked there temporarily. In either circumstance, and others where one sees hazard lights used for something other than warning of a potential or real hazard, it seems that these lights are flashing specifically to say, "I know I'm parked illegally, but please don't give me a ticket".
   This plea to traffic enforcement appears to be based on the ancient idea of confession, and the belief that if one admits to one's misdeeds, then that person should be forgiven. The person knows that they have wronged, but they are throwing themselves on the mercy of the court. They are pledging to do better next time.
   Socialized into and by a system that appears to relish the idea, at least in theory, that people are able to err, wrong their  rights, and begin life anew, it is reassuring to know that an individual can have a new future, where they can forget the one they knew themselves as, and became the better person they always wished they could be. The illegally parked automobile flashing their hazard lights seem to say, please don't punish the person I am in the process of leaving behind. Thank you.