I’m not one of those people who weighs her answers before she speaks. I know there are people like that, but I’m just not one of them. I could never be a lawyer, for instance.

I’m what you might call a blurter. You know that scene in Austin Powers where he’s thawing out and can’t help but speak every thought in his mind? He says something like, “How can I tell them that due to the unfreezing process, I have no inner monologue?” Anyway, that’s me, most of the time.

People will ask me a question, and instead of thinking about it for a while, I start talking around the answer until I find it. I mean, why do I feel the need to let people hear my entire thought process before I get to the answer they were looking for? It’s just plain confusing. I have to stop and say, “Okay, just ignore everything I said before. The answer is this….”

Not only can the blurting be confusing, it can also hurt people’s feelings. When my boss brought me my lovely 9th anniversary Fossil watch, I saw the box, and I said real ugly-like, “I know they didn’t get me a watch.” I mean, how was he to know that I consider a watch to be a symbol of enslavement, like wearing handcuffs or something? It’s silly, I know, because I’m bound to time whether I wear a watch or not. It’s only my delusion that makes me think I’m in any way free just because I’m not staring at my wrist every other minute. It’s not like it’s the normal thing. I’m supposed to want to own a nice watch, right?

In Anthony de Mello’s book Awareness, he spoke of being self aware, how if you could be aware of what you’re saying before you say it, then you won’t ever have a need to beg forgiveness. You will have said exactly what you meant to say, no apologies necessary. The problem is, Father de Mello told me what I should strive for, but he didn’t exactly tell me how to achieve it. I guess I’m on my own there.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 15th, 2007 at 12:46 pm and is filed under meanderings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.