Substance to Words

Sometimes I feel like I post about the exact same topics over and over and over. Do you have the same feeling? If so, them I've been repeating myself. Well, it's not a strange thing, as often we get the feeling that we talk but nobody listens, or that we speak, people listen, agree to us, but then they keep doing things as if nothing have been done. We repeat ourselves also when a given matter is important to us, or when we just don't get to say the words we are inside, but we want so much to bring the story forward that it keeps pulsing under our fingerpads for a very, very long time. So was yesterday's topic and so is today's.

It doesn't matter the number of times and the ways in which it happens, time and again we find that the word of people, and often our own word is losing strenght, losing importance. I don't mean here that we are heard or not, that our opinion matters or not, but I'm talking about promises, and also about threats. Often people either promise or threat with things they don't really intend to carry on, to get what they want. Politicians promise to us time and again for our votes, and never once carry through their promises (well, maybe some try, or make goon only on those promises that benefit them too), specially because that way the next candidate can reuse the same promises to get the votes. (After all, if you see that people fall for "creating jobs" then what will you do or say or promise if everybody gets a job?) People tend to fall time and again for these promises, specially when they are made on things people really need, people really want and in a way feel that they can't procure them for themselves.

Perhaps people can pull it aroung promising time and again to people who need to believe, but when you have promised over and over that you will get somewhere on time, that you'll do the chores, that you'll complete your part of the job, that you won't cheat anymore, sooner or later you'll find that people will pull away from you, and that your words and promises of commitment fall in deaf ears. This may take some time, but eventually will happen, no matter how gullible is the people you are promising things to. In a way it's kinda funny how you can keep on fake promises longer than with fake threats.

Fake threats are the ones that get discovered and lose their value faster. Even a child you can trick time and again promising that you'll take them to Disney but you never do won't fall for the second or third time you tell then you are going to punish them for something but you don't. When a boss or a teacher says that there will be consequences if you keep getting late, but nothing happens, you keep getting late without care, because in the end nothing happens. Happens so with the couple where one keeps threatening that they'll break up or file for divorce if this or that, but things never change and the threats are repeated continually without change. The seller won't change and won't take seriously the threats of the customer who continually promises to go to the competition because they have a better service or a better price, or a more convenient whatever, but keeps coming to the same seller.

Both with promises and threats it's important that we remember that words by themselves do nothing, that whatever we promise and whatever we threat on, we must make good. Keep your words, whatever the consequences, and so, think well what you promise and what you threat with. If you tell your friend to stop cheating at school or you'll tell on them, then tell on them when you catch them cheating again. Put substance to your words. It's funny, but this depends only on you, and from it, you can earn the respect of others. If you make your word worth, people won't have reasons to doubt you, so they'll take you seriously. This kinda doesn't get through with people who are in a relationship with someone who has discovered that they can be abused and squeezed for whatever they want, because their threats are empty. Long somber talks or screaming quarrels about ending the relationship if things don't change are meaningless when they are not consequentially followed through. The threat becomes even more phony, even more laughable, even more weak when it's presented as an ultimatum. Last warning, last chance... someone who gives a "last chance" normally gives it a thousand times.

You may ask, whether you should break up a relationship at the first sign of problems. Well, if you threat with it, yes. It doesn't matter either if you follow through with the breaking up, but then get back together with the person again.

Often times we wonder why people vote time and again for the same politicians, no matter how many times they cheat them, or why they keep buying products form the same phony companies, and often it has nothing to do with the promises that they get, but their inability to make their words true, translate them to actions. Words without Action are nothing.