moments of lucidity

You get them every so often. It’s like you’ve been hit full pelt in the middle of the head by one of those arrows with a sucker. And it sticks there, smack bang between your eyes, (probably vibrating up and down a bit) for at least a minute, as you wonder quite how fucking stupid you must have been to miss it in the first place.

Things would be easier without words. Poorer maybe (this is coming from someone who loves to craft words). So poorer, but easier.

Take a cat or a dog. I’ll go for cat here because Ron’s my muse at the present moment (Ron’s my cat in case you missed it or are just a bit slow). You know exactly where you stand with them at all times. Because it’s all about the actions. Words don’t even get a look in. It’s simpler. You give them a nice stroke, they give you a good old purr. You feed them, they rub against your legs. You let them into the house, they give you a thank you miaow. It’s straight forward and nobody’s ever under any misapprehension. If you piss them off they’ll walk off, or moodily bang their tail a few times, or just get it over and done with and scratch you.

It’s when you introduce words that things get complicated. Because folk say things that aren’t true, to make things easier for themselves, or because they want to get things. You get hung up on trusting what is said rather than focusing on the ultimately more reliable currency of actual solid action. Strip it back to the ‘doing’ and it would be a whole lot less of a headache.

It’s that age old truth isn’t it?  Actions speak louder than words. Christ, as I get older I realise how much I should always remember that in every last situation. As a well educated civilised human being, somehow it’s so easy to gloss over. You inevitably become tied up in ‘he said’ ‘she said’ crap when, really, all you need to remember is the bare bones: the do says it all.