26 January 2013
A lot of people were raised listening to their elders tell them, "if you don't have anything nice to say, say nothing at all". The general idea behind that statement was to make sure you always say something kind. I get it.
However, society began to excessively apply that adage across the board, literally. An alarming amount of people are so used to being praised incessantly that they don't recognize the difference between rude, mean comments and 'carefrontation'. We spend an inordinate amount of time sugar coating things/words, causing them to lose their impact to effect change due to the interpretation being lost in translation.
It no longer surprises me that the majority of people have no desire to effectively communicate. That action requires us to listen/hear things about ourselves we don't like. So, much like a young child who has yet to learn that in order to grow, we have to accept 100% of who we are, adults are averse to any suggestions/advice/help that aren't pleasing to their ears.
As adults, most of us have developed the ability to understand that in order to be at our best, we must be encouraged, as well as, disciplined. There has to be at least one person around us who will let us know we might be doing something incorrectly or show us where/how to improve. If the only thing we'll receive from them are words of adoration, we have a lot of mental and emotional growing left to do.
When will society admit that Americans aren't too keen on accepting life as it's doled out to us? An inconvenient truth is...we aren't that great at accepting the "bad" with the "good".
Help, Lost In Translation. • Opuss № I