" Do not be wise in words be wise in deeds. " Jewish Proverb
People will tell you what you want to hear. Yet their behaviors will tell you what you need to hear. People love to talk the talk, but matching your words with your actions requires a level of authenticity that few possess. It may be because in the spur of the moment, we feel a certain way, one that we won’t feel later on, after deliberate reflection. Or perhaps it stems from our desire to charm someone with our well-crafted speech - as a way to get a specific outcome out of it. Or maybe, we are simply unaware/unconscious or in denial of our evil tendency to pronounce pretty words to those we wish to dangerously trap into our own web of toxicity.
In a society where all hide their true identity behind a carefully placed mask, promises are nothing but handshakes full of empty air. We say words we don’t mean, to people we don’t truly know, to get what we want.
Yet we’re quite the experts at convincing ourselves of our supposedly good nature. “I’m a good person. I donate money to X number of charities.” “I’m a good person. I don’t hurt anyone.” “I’m a good person. My mother reminds me of it daily.” After all, could anyone be blunt and self-aware enough to say of themselves that they are a “bad person with bad intentions and an unconscious desire to harm others?” Doubtfully so.
While we seem incapable of seeing this precise behavior in our own selves, we appear to be equipped to spot it easily in others who display it. Someone being too kind to us for no apparent reason may scare the shit out of us so much so that we react weirdly. When it happens, we can’t help but wonder what can possibly be their intention by choosing to be so gentle to us.
We’ve been conditioned early on to believe that this world is one that operates in a transactional manner. Could there be such a thing as one being utterly kind with no extrinsic motives whatsoever? Does such purity of the heart even exist in human beings?
Our self-interest runs the show - yet we can’t admit to ourselves that even our kindest of actions are secretly driven by our need to get a positive or pleasurable outcome out of it.
We are compelled to live by the rule of the minimal effort. Hence why we opt for nice words to get our way. It is surely way easier to share an apology using all the right words - rather than making sure our future behaviors will honor the words we whispered one Friday night under the pressure of our unhappy spouse.
