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What I’ve Learned Today (#1): For Most People, Words Are Not A Serious Thing
It’s insane how little ordinary people care about what they say
Since childhood, I have felt that the people around me behave in bizarre ways.
For example, they misjudge a person, then they soon look like best friends. Except then they speak ill of it again. And so on. Why?
There’s more.
As usual, among my schoolmates, there was someone more intelligent, someone more diligent, and someone more capable than others. Yet, everyone belittled their abilities, spilling sympathy for the incapable. Why?
I could understand that the less capable flaunted contempt for skill, as in the fairy tale of the fox and the grape. But the most capable? Why did they also flaunt little consideration for their abilities as if they felt ashamed of them?
It took me a life to understand.
I remained for almost fifty years without an answer. Then, I formulate a question whose answer reveals the dynamics of the bizarre behaviors I have just described.
The question that revealed the mystery is straightforward. I hear it resound inside me.
Do people take the words they say seriously?
