There has been several occurrences in my life recently, that if not rude I would have rolled my eyes and said some things that would probably have shocked the people around me. Now these words weren't profanity or anything like that. They would have just been things that people wouldn't be use to me saying, well not out loud at least.
Like for example (now mind you this is a small and useless example but it's simple and gets the point across) a telemarketer phoned yesterday. It was a Saturday morning, I had the house to myself and I was just putting around. She phones and is trying to sell me insurance. I politely listen to her sell the product and I say nicely no thank you I'm not interested. Well then she goes on to tell me well if you're not interested in that we have something else that you might like. She she proceeds to tell me all about that. Again I say no thanks. Thinking we are done the conversation I start to say good bye and she launches into a whole new selling speech. So I politely say I'm really not interested and I'm in the middle of something and I need to be going. Good bye. Total phone conversation about 8 minutes.
Now same conversation if I would have said what I wanted would have probably only totaled about 1-2 minutes. It would have went more like you call me on a Saturday and I tell you I'm not interested and you proceed to talk. Thanks for wasting my time, I'm hanging up NOW. The only hitch is I would have felt bad.
I know some of you are sitting there asking why I would have felt bad. Well I would have felt bad because 1. It would have been rude, 2. she's only trying to do her job and maybe she has a family to support, 3. If ever I had to be in her position I would like to think that people would treat me with respect.
Instead I leave the whole interaction annoyed and my head filled with less then nice things to say. But I did listen to her and I tried my hardest to be pleasant and polite to her. I also have a theory about this and was talking to my husband about it the other day. What would happen if all the sudden you just started saying all of those less then nice things floating around in your head? Our conclusion was that people would probably be taken back and caught off guard and would stand there with their mouth gapping open, just asking for you to say something more. We also concluded that when they walked away and gossiped about you later with someone else, they would say I never knew so and so was so mean, I never would have guessed that about them.
So this leaves me to believe one of two things. Either the person that coined the phrase, "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all", was a saint and never had an ill thought towards anyone or about anything OR they were filled with resentment and annoyance far too early in their life from keeping it all bottled up. This leaves me with the realization that now that I have the art of biting ones tongue down, I need to learn to forgive people for making me want to say less then nice things to them. Anyone have a thought on that? Anyone?
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