Monday, November 23, 2009

what are words for?

They say the definition of crazy is to repeat the same behavior over and over, expecting a different result. I try to remember this on a fairly regular basis, because I tend to be a creature of habit. I think most people are. The reason I type this though, isn't because of me, it's because of what I have recently noticed others doing. Too often I hear from friends who are "shocked, shocked I tell you," when they repeat behavior that has once burned them and they end up getting the same unwanted result. This seems ... counter-productive, counter-intuitive, and in some cases just flat-out dumb!

I think this translates into inter-personal/conversational behavior as well.

I know a number of people who dumb-down their conversations just to get through a night. It goes a number of ways. You might dumb-down your conversation because you think that's what people want to hear. You might think it makes you really attractive and "cute"/"hot" to be dumb as a bag of hammers! You might be forced to dumb-down your conversation so you don't have to end up in a bar-fight, or you might have to do it just to maintain a flowing conversation because your conversational counterpart can't keep up. And the list goes on, but the list isn't the point ... the point is this ... if you find yourself regularly in these situations, do you think it might be a good idea to rethink the people you've been chatting up?

Maybe the venue has changed, but if the conversations are remaining the same aren't you just talking to the same person occupying a different vessel? And clearly ... if you do this over and over again, the conversation isn't so satisfying.


2 comments:

  1. I think a lot of us just want to believe in people who are a bit undeserving. Everybody has their prodigal son and we all bet on the wrong horse at some point. We excuse behavior, because we convince ourselves that when it came down to it, the person would come around. But the way I see it, the world only rotates in one direction: forward.

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  2. I can understand people exhibiting this kind of behavior a few times, maybe even a handful or half dozen times. I also think there are plenty of people who are undeserving, who aren't soul-suckers, or harmful in anyway. While undeserving, they're also harmless. The harmless ones aren't the ones I'm referring to though.

    To allow the soul-sucking, harmful, antagonistic, melancholic, dense, ones any priority over and over however, makes me think maybe there's something you're missing when you're checking out the man in the mirror, and maybe you could be far better off if you addressed that.

    Of course when I say "you" or "you're" I'm using it in the general sense.

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