Maybe those who are fond of making speeches, or what they think are speeches, those who like placing themselves in front of cameras for interviews, opinions or even so-called expert advice should be charged hefty sums for every additional word they voice. How about that! Imagine the amount of quality time we would have saved other than preventing people from developing fresh stomach crams or digging out the never-leaving gastric nightmares.
What maybe we can do is tell what ever speaker, “It’d be a 500-word speech and no more. Others should get the chance to voice their opinions.” And if Mr. Speaker he’s too smart to stick to such directive smart and goes into 501 he should pay a sum which would really rock his wallet. The heftier the fine the better we would be. Well, you can place some “Maybe…” or any word that carries the same message in large fonts at the start of the sentence; because this is a big ‘maybe’ to the while idea which seems to have from some nerd who has lost three quarters of his brain’s capacity. With brains already underperforming that would be a big problem. It’s unluckily many of us think the longer our speech goes the higher our rating within the public. Nothing would be more slippery.
I have a friend who for long was a civil servant. He happened to be an employee of a certain organization where meetings seem to be the most important ‘active duty’ in the place. There would always be some reason to hold meetings and the brass, so the rumors go, liked it that way. Why? I’ll tell you why. Now there were all kinds of stories that made the rounds about the brass taking home per dime which made the salaries of the midlevel workers chickenfeed. The story would have been if they were against the meeting mania as it serves them as the cow which never ages old enough to decrease the amount of milk it produces.
Now my friend, who is one guy who seems to have nothing he hates more than meetings. By some not-so-nice luck his immediate bosses always assured he attended the meetings. But even then he was never of the woods. A few minutes into any meeting he starts dozing once past the first phases he helps like a doll despite all the sounds. As the number of meetings grew he relocated and sat somewhere in the middle trying his best to have a couple of taller guys in the seats directly in front of him.
Yes, that worked quite well for some time as he dozed more without being noticed. But like many things that didn’t last. Some ill-hearted fellow from among the staff reported him this bosses and he was in for some heavy real reprimand. He refused to accept the order to sit somewhere in the front rows during meetings saying that the brighter lights up front interfered with his vision.
They didn’t push him any further and he backslid even the more and started sitting in the very last rows. It was the smartest move of him. After that whenever he goes to meetings he joked “Let me have my nap.” His hate for meetings wasn’t without reason. It happened that most of the people who climbed the podium to make speeches made so long and so boring speeches that it was as some sort of torment.
The game here is that going out onto the podium and making speeches was the foolproof way of making the bosses happy. You can imagine the flowery report the send to the upper brass about the ‘momentous and highly fruitful’ meeting. In other words there are too many of us out here who try to climb all scales of life on the ‘strength’ of our tongues! Believe me these days there seem to be far too many of us who have decided to live by our tongues and do anything and everything to achieve our goals. That stark reality of ‘modern’ life is there are much fewer who live by their brains as many of us prefer to flex the muscles of our tongues.
Living by the tongue isn’t about beliefs and principles. It is not about values, morale or anything like those. I mean those who have self-confidence and who don’t need any …
But of course it would not be wishful thinking that many times there can be self-destruction due to the wrong vibration of our tongues. Here is a piece of story courtesy of social media.
Two snakes are hanging out, when one asks the other… “Hey, are we venomous?”
The other snake replies, “I’m not sure.”
“Well I hope not,” the first snake says, “Because I just bit my tongue.”
That’s the most terrible thing to happen, wouldn’t you say? I mean some sake dying with its own poison! So maybe just maybe those of us given to usage our tongues for the most venomous narratives better watch out because any self-bite might turn out to be a virtual catastrophe.
There’s this thing we use frequently. Say someone asks you the name of a childhood chum who seems to have ended up into something you never thought. Now during your school days he was so humble and well-mannered and controlled that his friends used to say he’d end up a preacher or something like that. And what is he now? A politician! “What? Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not. In fact he is executive member of some political party which I never knew existed!”
“So what does he preach as a politician? I mean are they liberals, conservatives communist or…”
I once heard some politician saying that his party ‘so and so liberal.’ I mean they put so much luggage before, and sometimes after, the word liberal you can’t even say it correctly. The extra terminology could be so out of tune at least when you voice it! So he said his party was ‘something liberal.’ It might have been a couple of years and I don’t know what they’re doing. I mean it is so easy to talk these days no one presses you. I remember the journalist talking to the fellow never pressed him “Could you explain that so our audience wouldn’t be confused…” or “What are the core beliefs of such ….” No he said they were something-liberal and that was that.
So maybe ‘living by the tongue’ could do wonders for some time to the practitioners. But then even the snake was worried if biting his own tongue would mean he’d be gone for good. And we never know when our own teeth do damage to our own tongues. That could in no way be a comfortable experience to any hard-boned person as even the snake worried for biting its own tongue.
The Ethiopian Herald October 8/2023