It Goes In One Ear...

...And Right Out the Other

It seems that no matter how good the advice, how well stated the proposition, how well defined the argument, or how passionately a position is stated that most of the time it slides right in one ear and drips, drips, drips right out the other.

You get bent out of shape about a topic and you vent. But where do you do it? Is it productive? Are you just HA wasting time on a blog that won't get read? Is it a matter of just getting it out of your head? Well, that's ok.

But if you want someone to listen you tell me how that gets done. It's difficult to sit someone down and make 'em listen to what you have to say. We are all our most important people. Our own opinions are obviously so much more correct and better than all the rest.

Why should you expect anyone else to listen if you aren't willing to offer the same in return?

Our society, this American Blogosphere, this United States of Me, is so fond of giving everyone options. Options for buying and selling and entertainment and how to go into debt so fast you can't even think. Options for careers and failures. Options for love and hate. Options for everything.

We sure as hell don't fail at giving out options for being heard. We are by far and away the most outspoken country in the world. Despite a lot of the monitoring that does occur we are very slightly limited in how we say what we say and when we say it and how we say it. We are free.

But are we listening?

Do you really listen to the fifty million Facebook friends you follow? Probably not very much. And why should you when the majority of what we say is so quick and small and minor. Each titillating tidbit of typing you Twitter is very important to you, but not life or death to everyone else. Livejournal may be your deepest, darkest secrets and most heartfelt loves and passions, but the key word to remember is that it is YOURS.

So, why should we expect anyone else to sit down and listen when all that we say is so fast and small and insignificant? Would you listen to a random associate on the street go on and on about their day in person? You might for a few seconds but you wouldn't really care.

Do we really care? Are we a nation of wasted words? Does what we say have depth anymore? Do the words you utter mean anything?

If you are reading this you may wonder why I am typing it. Do I have some motive or reasoning? I have none at all. I am just wasting time. I am just trying to get some thoughts out of my head and practice writing at the same time. I am just spouting nonsense that probably doesn't need to be listened to anymore than anything else anyone else ever says.


There is no moral here. Just questions and mindless self-indulgence.