Wanzology

Watch What You Say

 WANZOLOGY, yeah WANZOLOGY, here we go again with WANZOLOGY. How's it going? How you doing? If you are here for the first time, welcome! Nice to see ya, sort of. And if you're coming back, thank you very much. Appreciate you being here. WANZOLOGY, the place where strange and weird thinking going on here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I, uh, I have to admit every once in a while, I have to remind myself it's okay, for me to think the way that I think, because no one else thinks the way that I do, and yeah, that goes for you too. We are driving headlong, headfirst, to the end of #THEBOOKOFWANZ, the book of wanz. Of wanz, which you can find on Amazon still, and if you haven't gotten a copy, you know, it's a, it makes a great gift for those acquaintances that may need a change in thinking. I don't know.

Anyway, uh, today's chapter is:
WATCH WHAT YOU SAY CAUSE YOUR WORDS ARE SPOKEN IN INK, NOT PENCIL.

Communication is definitely one of the most complicated processes going for humans. Not only do we have different languages and dialects, but then throw in expressions and intention, and you have the makings of misunderstanding at almost every turn. To top it all off, spread a thick layer of emotion on it all, and then things can get really twisted. Oh, the many times all of us have spoken out of anger, pain, naivete, or just plain stupidity. How many times have we wished we could take it back and say what we really meant? Unfortunately, time does not always allow ‘do overs’ and what we say to other people and ourselves becomes a permanent record sometimes etched Indelibly in our memory. My old friend Dan asked me once< “What’s the difference between a reply and a response?” The answer? Time. It takes time to step out of a situation, a conversation, and think about what's really going on. It takes time to formulate an emotion plus intelligence, plus empathy into a sentence that can accurately convey our thoughts. Often, we're caught up in a moment and just let the words fly without regard for the listener. The mistake can sometimes be devastating for them, so take care and what you say to whom and when you say it. Just because you can say something, doesn't mean you always should.

Nothing tastes better than the taste of your own foot in your own mouth, right? How many times have we, and I say we because I ain't special, I’m just like you, human. How many times have we spoken without thinking and lived to regret it? I'm so guilty that it's frightening. Sometimes to the point where I'm afraid to say anything for fear of saying the wrong thing. And what's the wrong thing? The wrong thing usually is anything spoken without any measure of tact. You can tell someone their feet are too big if you can do it tactfully, ’butt’ in them jeans, “My! I love the roundness of your shape. Have you always looked this good?” Tact. It's a skill, you have to work on it, because usually we're, we're just flying by the seat of our pants. Most times people are just trying to get from one moment to the next without hurting themselves or other people. More times than not they don't even realize they're hurting other people. That's the worst.

It's the worst to say what you think is like, okay, it's a cool thing and no big deal, and it is actually very, very painful for somebody else. You like a certain type of dog that someone used to own, or you talk about your kitty that was your favorite, and these people just lost theirs. You can go into family members all day long. Favorite uncles, aunts, grandma, grandpa, cousins, brother, sister. They're all there, and we lose them. Pops used to tell me, “Nobody gets out of this alive.”

But while we're here, how possible is it that we can be more aware of what we're going to say, rather than being aware of what we're saying? How do we practice that? How do we practice what we're going to say, instead of just stumbling into what we say? It's very difficult. It's really hard. Most times, when we listen to people, we're listening just so we can respond. Very rarely are we listening to actually be a part of the conversation, sharing our point of view, acknowledging their point of view, finding a place in the middle that, you know, you find common ground and you both come away feeling great because you're connected. Usually, we're looking for the zinger or we're looking for the funny thing. This is me speaking for me. I'm not speaking for you, looking for the zinger, looking for the funny thing to say, to get the rise out of somebody, or maybe looking for that one thing that is going to change the course of someone's life. Like that's my responsibility, which it is not, but I, uh, I try to be on the lookout, just in case. Having gone a lot of places, done a lot of things, paid a lot of attention on how other people do things, I feel confident that I can help somebody. Not everybody, but somebody. I can help. I can help with a perspective that is not your own.

This is the whole idea. We're supposed to share our perspectives. Because as humans, generally we're going through the same things. All the time, all the time, we're going through life as it comes, right? We can't like, go through life as it was, because was is was and we're trying to stay up with what's coming. Not easy, not easy at all to pause. Maybe even take a breath, oh that would be a luxury, and consider what to say before the words escape. Not sure how that's gonna turn out. Not sure how that's gonna turn out for anybody.

For me though, it is kind of like a video game. You get killed in a video game, you can press reset and try again. It may sound trivial, but to me it's not. I really appreciate when I've already messed up and I have the opportunity to go back and do over, have the opportunity to do better, actually take and embrace the opportunity to say something real rather than something that's hurtful, spiteful, mean, inconsiderate, or just plain *ish*. I'd rather talk about, I’d rather talk about and share good things. I think all of us would, right? All of us would really like to just, you know, “Oh yeah, did you watch this baseball game?”, “Oh yeah, did you hear this new song?”, “Oh yeah, I like, did you see these clothes?” Blah blah blah. I'd rather talk about those things than why all the religions of the world don't seem to be able to get along with each other. Or why certain people want one person to rule over everybody or, you know, pick your poison in that one.

They used to say, never, ever, ever discuss sex, politics, or religion when you first meet someone. And of course, those are the first three things I want to talk about. Cause you know, that's where people usually are real. People are usually real about their faith. They're real about their politics and they're real about sex. And they almost always have an opinion on all three of them. But the smart people, well, some people think they're smart, avoid those conversations like the plague. I try, I tend to gravitate to them because those are three topics that usually people will say exactly how they feel. They'll say exactly what they think, and you are expected to take it. You're expected to accept it as a fact as real as gravity. Which in practice, doesn't always happen. Theory is nice, but in practice, at least when you're talking to me, I might have a few questions. I might challenge your perspective, not because I'm trying to demean you or, or I'm trying to put you down or anything like that. No, no, no. I just want a perspective that's different from my own. Maybe yours works for me. I don't know. There have been more than a few conversations that I've had with people over the decades. More than a few conversations that have led to me changing how I think about things.

The reason that the change happens is because I believe what I'm hearing I could use to make me better at whatever it is I'm trying to do. Better friend. better partner, better man, better father, grandfather, the things that I can be. I just want to be better at them. So, listening to another person's perspective, it's definitely a challenge because I am honest to God, curious about what someone thinks, not so much what they think, but how they think, why they think that the way that they do.

I mean, I don't understand some of the extremes on the left or the right, because it's like a canoe, the safest place is in the middle of the boat. Not too far to the left or not too far to the right. That's where the majority of people are, in the middle of the boat! They call them extremes because they are not in the middle of the boat. But the middle is, it's very wide. I was talking to a kid last week, and I asked him, how you doing? And he says, “I'm up and down.”, and he described what up and down meant to him? And he says, “I wish I could just be a little less up or a little less down.” And I said, “huh, you ever been on a two- lane road where you're going one way and traffic is coming at you coming another way?” And he says, “Yeah.” And I say, “you ever look at the stripes in the middle of the street?” And he goes, “no, not really.” And I said, “that's what I try to be. I try to be as wide as the paint of the strip in the middle of the street. And if I find that I've gone all the way to the edge of a lane, and it's that white line at the, on the edge of the lane, I've gone too far. But I have all that room to screw up in so that I can come back to the center of the road.” It's not easy. It's like walking on curb, you know, walking on a, in a parking lot where they have the like the cement stops to stop your tires. Nobody ever thinks about it anymore, but it used to be a really big deal to be able to walk one foot in front of the other, like on a balance beam. On those little things, but that's what life could be like if there were a little more thought into what you're going to say, what you're going to do instead of, Oh, I just did that. Oh, I just said that. Unless of course you really, really do enjoy the taste of your foot in your mouth. In that case, it becomes a whole different conversation. Are you an A1 person or? Heinz 57 person? I don't know. Surf and turf maybe? I don't know.

Seriously though. There are ways to practice this. One that was shared with me that comes to mind right now is to say something as if you were speaking to someone you didn't know, and you listen to those words and think of what you could say, and then you say them back and then you do the same thing just a few times, you know, but what it is is you get in the habit of what was just said? Now, what are the things that I could say?

See what I'm talking about? Hopefully, what I just put down is something that you could pick up because as the chapter says, watch what you say, because your words are spoken in ink, not pencil and sometimes, they might leave a mark.

Let's all just be careful out there, okay?

Take care of yourself and hopefully take care of somebody else, especially when they need somebody else, all right? Thanks a lot for being here. I'll see you next week.