All the wrong things

As good a place to start a blog as any, I suppose - saying the wrong thing - it has to be something that bloggers do all the time, right?  I mean, it's something that most people do at least once in their life.  Some of us do it as a matter of course and then spend days stressing about it.  Should we apologise, or does that just dig a deeper hole in which to bury what's left of our social and professional lives?  Should we leave it alone and maybe just seem ignorant?  Should we wait and see if the person or persons we realise we offended act differently toward us?  Will it fade away or will it fester?

These are questions that plague those of us with the unerring ability to say all the wrong things.  It's not even a case of putting one's foot in it.  It's simply a knack for saying the most inappropriate thing at the most inappropriate time.  It's not as easy as saying "I've been dying to tell you how sorry I am", because you can guarantee the moment you choose to say it is at the funeral of that person's beloved relative.  It's a real malfunction of the brain.  As some would call it, a brain fart.  Some brains are afflicted with constant flatulence.

It takes real talent to consistently say the wrong thing.  It needs a real sense of what shouldn't be said together with the genius of great ideas and eager opinions.  Then you need a huge amount of sensitivity and here's the paradox.  You have to be so sensitive to what the other person thinks that you cease to verbalise correctly, blurting out what comes to mind, however it comes to mind, regardless of form, inevitably sounding like an insensitive, insensible fool.  What we meant to say, when we try to slow down and restructure our bletherings, falls on deaf ears.  The other person has shut down their auditory function for the time being while they process their incredulity.

It's a painful state of affairs.  If we were really as insensitive as we now seem, we wouldn't have made the blunder in the first place.  If we weren't so enthusiastic and eager to tell someone that something of the utmost importance, we wouldn't have been so forthright in causing offence.  But it's too late and there is no rewind button for life.

So why do we always repeat the same pattern?  Well, to an extent it's our own unconscious fault.  It's not something we're aware of at the time, but we're only too conscious of it after the fact.  Thought processes follow patterns, and those patterns are always the same unless we change them.  We can do it, but it takes time and effort.  When we have those bright ideas, we need to stop, think, rehearse the presentation, plan alternative answers, calm down then, and only then, act.

But if I know all this, why blog about it as if it's just happened?  That would be because it has.  I was told the conference call would be Friday and I hadn't yet taken the deep breaths, formulated my thoughts and rehearsed every possible question and answer when it came in a day early.  In the course of things, I opened my mouth without knowing what was going to come out.  I've already apologised, but I sense a dark cloud over the future implications.  It seems there's still a way to go in retraining those thought patterns to stop digging a hole where there doesn't have to be one.  Nobody's perfect, but some of us have a dumbfounding ability for leading with the wrong foot, usually by putting it firmly in our mouths.