Just Keep Your Mouth Shut
Just Keep Your Mouth Shut. It’s simple, see Life Lesson Day 4. Maybe, it is its simplicity that makes it so profound. Easy to preach, difficult to practice. I’m confident if we take the time to self-reflect, we’ve all had at least some instance or situation in life where we could have done better abiding by this maxim. Part of my inspiration for this Life Lesson comes from Sirach 5,15 Honor and dishonor through talking! A man’s tongue can be his downfall. Well said Sirach, well said.
I’m somewhere close to the 15 year mark in marriage and I’m sure I could have saved myself a lot of trouble if a wiser man had told me this in the beginning. But, then again, I would have had to listen, so, not confident it would have helped. For some reason I always felt the need to put in my two cents, like arguing about not buying brand name premium ice cream. Come on, I’ve put in 40+ hours this week. I’m not out binging with the boys every night. Generally speaking, I treat you pretty well. Can I at least enjoy some decent ice cream? Is one gallon of good ice cream too much to ask? Reading it out loud, yeah, probably should have kept that one close to the vest and used it as a teaching opportunity for the next time she heads out grocery shopping, if I didn’t already ruin it with that diatribe.
It took me a long time to realize my wife doesn’t always necessarily need me to speak. For instance, when we take a walk and she is telling me about her day. It is ok to let her speak, let her share her day or vent and not respond with some kind of solution or Life Lesson. I know it goes against the innate nature of the masculine man to be strong and fix the problem and offer guidance, but let’s face it, women are smarter than us. They don’t need our advice, most times, they just need us to listen. Its effectiveness knows no bounds, it even works on the population at large.
Now with kids I’ve realized the old saying the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree has a bit of truth to it. Quite a few conversations with my two human resources have centered around the value of nodding their head and letting someone else have the last word. Particularly with my son. It seems as though he feels the only way to dignify his existence is to always get the last word in. More often than not it does more harm than good. Even when I start the conversation with look, no one is in trouble. The need to come up with an excuse as to why it was done is automatic. It’s like he wasn’t even listening. I didn’t ask for the excuse, just looking for it to be done next time or not be done again, depending on the situation. I’m sure he’s inherited my intoxicating masculinity, so that is probably at least partially to blame.
I’m curious to hear from you. Was there a particular moment or example when you should have Just Kept Your Mouth Shut? The urge to get the last word in is strong and sometimes the battle can be easy, other times we lose and live to fight it another day. Even if your story is terrible, you can rest easy knowing you’ve had the last word, I’ll just nod my head.
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