You're that porcelain commode

On thoughtless words, skid marks, and the loneliness of paying attention

Imagine the last time you had a good meal. One that made you lick your fingers and not think about your weight. One that made you want to marry the chef without thinking about chef’s gender. A dish so good it made you a liberal. You had a great time. You head back home, change into your PJs (pyjamas), slide under your blanket before you slide into other person’s DMs. You’re soon in your dreamland with a perfect life, one full of abundance and peace. Before you know it, you’re in deep sleep and ready to crush the next day.

The next morning arrives and so does your nature call. It was one of those good days where you feel like you’ve transformed into someone with better mood. You feel light. You look down at your toilet, ready to wave goodbye to what was once a part of you. And you flush it with the convenience at your disposal. But things don’t end here. It didn’t go away completely. It left skid marks. Plural. As if it didn’t want to go. It wasn’t ready yet. You flush again, the water gushes once more but it lacks the fierceness it had the first time. The tank needs to refill. You wait, trying not to look at it. But it gawks at you with the look of I know what you did last summer.

The tank is full and so are your spirits. One pull of lever and it all goes away. Except there is a dot now. This is a never ending process. Even if you make the dot go away, the thought that it resisted for so long stays with you. The fact that it held its spot even after you tried so hard, made you uncomfortable.

Now hold this thought. And don’t worry, thoughts don’t stink.

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YouTube has been a constant for me unlike Netflix, which keeps recommending me the same titles over and over again. Maybe Netflix isn’t stalking me that well. Guess I like some algorithmic toxicity in my life. YouTube has something for me for almost every emotion I’m feeling and it doesn’t take much effort to reach that video. It was this platform which helped me discover TEDx videos, where experts and non-experts have talked about almost everything.

One such video I saw was on one of the greatest mysteries of human evolution, the emergence and development of languages. Humans unlike other animals speak so many different languages that most humans only know 2-3 languages at max. What baffles me even more is that our mind knows so much, can and does comprehend so many things, helps us achieve the almost unimaginable, yet some people use it to talk absolute shit.

They speak without thinking how the other person would feel. Their brains are so good at running on low energy mode that they keep the parts which control empathy and sanity turned off. If someone like them is reading, please let me know where do you spend your energy. I would like to see the most exquisite thing humankind has ever witnessed.

Have you noticed people driving on the road who turn all of a sudden without giving an indicator. They are the same people who turn the course of their words, the moment a contradiction arises.

Just yesterday, I was talking to one such person and we were discussing about the habit my daughter has where she puts her fingers in her mouth because of teething issues.

That person makes her remove her fingers out of her mouth and says, “no beta, that’s not a good habit.”

I tell her that it is fine, she doesn’t have a habit of sucking thumb, she does that to soothe herself when the gums irritate a lot. To which that person replied, “yes, teething is a big problem with kids. It must hurt a lot.”

“Yes, that’s why she does that. It irritates her.”
”That’s right. she should do that if that soothes her. Many children do it.”

Then she went on to give me 147 examples of how kids have been doing it ever since the first kid was born after a Homo Erectus had an erection.

What did just happen?
She changed her course of words and contradicted herself in just 10 seconds. That’s quick even for a politician!

Every time I am a part of such conversation. Source

This is not a one time thing. They’re more consistent than Bajaj Finance folks calling you every week for an overdraft or a credit card.

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As per the law of conservation of energy, if one person is consuming too much energy to come up with words that matter, another person exists which will utter words with negligible energy spent on them. Such people even hold big responsible positions at a global stage.

Here is a theory. People who speak without thinking are not careless. They are afraid. Specifically, they are afraid of the pause. That half second of silence between a question and an answer, between a challenge and a response that makes them think and it terrifies them. Because in that gap, they would have to admit, even briefly, that they don’t know. That they need a moment. That the world can exist for two seconds without their commentary. And that is terrifying!

So they fill it. Immediately. With the first thing that arrives. Premature ejaculation is not good even if it is just about words.

The first thing that arrives is almost never the right thing. It is just the closest thing. A word that was lying around near the entrance of their brain, shoes still on, not fully inside yet. They grab it and throw it into the conversation before checking what it is.

The silence, had they allowed it, would have been fine. Comfortable, even. The people worth talking to know that a pause means you are thinking. That you are taking their words seriously enough to weigh them before responding. A pause is respect, disguised as nothing.

But the ones who can’t pause don’t know this. To them, silence is a verdict. So they keep talking. And contradict themselves. And keep talking some more.

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What it does to you, over time, is subtler than you’d expect. You don’t get angry. Anger would require you to believe it could be different. What you get instead is a kind of quiet recalibration. You start measuring your words more carefully in rooms where you know they won’t be met with the same care. You stop making the precise point because you’ve learned it will be agreed with, then contradicted, then agreed with again, all within the same conversation. You start speaking in a way that requires less from the listener. Shorter sentences. Safer observations. Nothing that needs to be handled gently.

It is, in the long run, a lonelier adjustment than it sounds. You haven’t lost the words. You’ve just learned where not to use them.

And this is bad. Healthy conversations sharpen your thinking. Which means some of us are out here bringing a very rusty sword to the only fight that matters.

Such people are everywhere. In your office, making small talk about your weekend plans with the sincerity of a terms and conditions page. They will ask how your Saturday was and begin mentally composing their own answer before you’ve finished saying “it was fine.” Your weekend was a loading screen. They were never watching it.

In family gatherings, there is always one person who has been appointed by nobody and confirmed by everyone’s silence as the official spokesperson for opinions you didn’t ask for. They will tell you how to raise your child, park your car, cook your dal, and live your life, in that order, before the first round of chai has even gone cold. They speak with the confidence of someone who has never once googled anything because they already know.

In comment sections, they arrive having read the headline, armed with the conviction of someone who wrote the thesis. They will type “actually” and then say something that is not actually anything. They have opinions on everything and expertise in the opinion of having opinions.

And in the office — God, the office — there is always someone who uses “synergy” without intent, calls a meeting to plan the meeting, and walks up to your desk when you have headphones. The international symbol for I have left this dimension, please do not attempt contact. He/she already has a chair. He/she was never asking. Forty five minutes later he/she will arrive at your suggestion from minute three, call it “great ideation,” and leave you staring at your screen like a man who has been asked to explain cloud storage to a pigeon.

You learn to spot them early. There is a particular look they get right before they speak. The words are always packed and waiting at the door. The thought never got the address.

The worst part is not the contradiction. The worst part is they walk away feeling heard, feeling productive, feeling like that really went somewhere and they actually contributed something. And you walk away having quietly retired three sentences you will never say in that room again.

This is how good words go to die. Not in arguments. Not in fights. In the slow, conscious decision to stop spending them where they won’t be received. You start saving your best lines for people who will sit with them before responding. You start having, without meaning to, a parallel conversation, the real one, the good one running entirely in your head. And somewhere on the way home, alone in the car or in the shower, perfectly. Though to no one. And this makes you look crazy.

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You reach home. You are done with the day and everyone in it. You just want to sleep.

You slip into your PJs, slide under your blanket, and drift off to that perfect life. The one full of abundance and peace. The one where people say what they mean.

The next morning, nature calls. You answer. You flush. You wait.

The dot remains.

arrgghh! Source

And you realise, standing there in the gentle morning light, that this is just how it is. The teething woman is still out there, contradicting herself at full speed. The synergy guy is already drafting the agenda for a meeting about the meeting. They are rested, unbothered, and completely unaware that they left a mark.

You are the porcelain.

You didn’t choose this. You just ended up being the surface that remembers. The one that noticed the weight of words while they walked away feeling light.

The tank refills. Life goes on.

But some marks stay. Not because they’re powerful but because you’re paying attention.

Thank you Nanoheart for proof-reading this essay. :)

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