You're Brilliant. Now Stop Talking.

This afternoon I was in a class and was lucky enough to be sitting next to a professor (whom I adore) because he was listening in on our class for the day.

At one point in the lecture, he leaned over and shared a joke with me. Panic! I was so stoked that he was speaking, much less wasting a joke on me that I forgot to listen. Worsened by the dark room and quiet audience, there was no way I was going to kill whatever special moment he had just created between us by asking him to repeat himself.

So, fight or flight kicked in and I instinctively mimicked his exact expression and mumbled something back with the same animation he had used. I didn't even use words. I literally mumbled sounds. His reaction? He genuinely laughed, nodded, and turned back in his seat, satisfied with whatever he thought I had said.

Then I realized something that I think I probably already knew, but am just now articulating. We are all so insanely in love with ourselves that we sort of just hear what we expect or want to hear unless the person is loud enough to sway our egos otherwise; which can only lead me to one conclusion: all this conversation that we have been having with people is A. just a conversation we have really had with ourselves and B. completely unnecessary.

So what happens now? I propose that we really only need to get one good impression of any person. After that, we can all just mumble to each other, and the recipient can just assume that it was probably intelligent, stupid, embarrassing, inappropriate, etc. anyway. Not only can we do this, but we pretty much do it anyway.

So. If there is one thing that anyone who may ever read this should remember about me it's that mmnb bhmmb bumnbh hhm bbbmbnh.