Suicide is painless

In my day job, I coordinate for North Carolina an arrangement involving all of the southeastern states by which they share "not commonly available" academic degree programs with each other's residents at in-state tuition rates.
    At least, I thought I did. For years I've quoted "not commonly available" thinking I was quoting from the regional guidelines governing all of the participating states. But yesterday I discovered that the guidelines don't even touch the topic. The arrangement actually permits participating states to share with each other any of their academic degree programs they want to share, however commonly or uncommonly available they may be. The word "common" or "uncommon" isn't even used in this context. The only regional restriction on sharing is that the states can't approve another state's degree program for their residents if they have a similar program.
    There is the proviso, though, that each state may have additional guidelines based on its own needs. And North Carolina does have an additional guideline, one that was written into the legislation that authorizes our participation in the arrangement. That is, it's the law. We may

select for participation only...programs that are likely to be unique or are not commonly available in other participating states.

    I'd always read the legislation as simply codifying for North Carolina the regional guideline affecting all of the participating states. And I'd always read the regional guidelines sure that they stated somewhere that the states could share only their "not commonly available" degree programs. But I recently became aware that another of the states doesn't consider uncommonness of availability, and I asked the state coordinator, "How can you just ignore the regional guideline?" She asked me to show her what in the guidelines I was referring to.
    I pored over their every line but couldn't find the phrase anywhere, nor any language remotely like it. It was all just in my mind.

Self-deception is so easy, at least as easy as suicide is painless, a clause from Robert Altman's 14-year-old son Mike's lyrics for the song from M*A*S*H:

Suicide is painless,
It brings on many changes,
And I can take or leave it if I please.

    Self-deception, though, isn't at all easy to take or leave. Several days of email exchanges were required to bring me to the definitive reading of the regional guidelines. Self-deception hides from us, even weaves a thick web of supporting deceptions to protect itself. That is, we hide the deception, we weave the web.
    I haven't been able to discover that I had any powerful motive for deceiving myself about "not commonly available." Somehow or other I got the idea that it was in the regional guidelines, which seemed eminently sensible. How could it be otherwise? All of the states were simply sharing their uncommon programs. That was what it was all about, that's how I'd explained the arrangement to hundreds of people.
    I must have heard dozens of clues, during email exchanges or conversations or at meetings of state coordinators, that it just wasn't so, but my woven web "protected" me from picking up on them, even enabled me to neutralize conflicting statements or simply reject them as uninformed. I understood it better than they did.

If we can do this in matters with little at stake, think how well we must be able to do it in matters of love, life, and death. We believe that we're loved when we're not (or that we're loved more or more often than we really are). We believe that someone is looking out for us when no one is. We even believe that the someone is the Best Someone There Could Be.

...Few people know that most airports have houses of worship: they tend to be white, high-ceilinged, scrubbed, and soundproof, imbued with a spirituality so general that even atheists can find refuge in them. They go unused, for the most part, except in times of emergency and terror—after a crash or when a war breaks out. They're eerie little niches but also restful and perfect for catching up on paperwork....[p. 103, Up in the Air, by Walter Kirn, 2001]

...[Owners] of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion they they are god...Religion, then, partakes of equal elements of the canine and the feline. It exacts maximum servility and abjection, requiring you to regard yourself as conceived and born in sin and owing a duty to a stern creator. But in return, it places you at the center of the universe and assures you that you are the personal object of a heavenly plan. Indeed, if you make the right propitiations you may even find that death has no sting, and that an exception to the rules of physical annihilation may be made in your own case....[p. xvi, Introduction to The Portable Atheist, by Christopher Hitchens, 2007]