Musings at Altitude

I suffer mightily from an overwhelming desire to give flippant, typically one word, and always “you-got-to-be-kidding-me” answers.  It’s a life-long problem that got me hauled into the Principal’s office when I was in grade school, got me slapped when I was a teenager for being disrespectful and got me “put on report” during my military years for insubordination. 

As I think back on these examples and the many other times I’ve responded without thinking, any one of them should have taught me the much needed lesson that responding without thinking is a bad thing.

But they didn’t.

And I still say stupid things, without pausing for that needed time to assess the response, including how it would be received and who would be affected.

But with age (hopefully) comes wisdom.

I’m starting to realize that I don’t need to instantly respond to very many things.  In fact, I’m finding that if I patiently wait and thoughtfully ponder my response, more often than not, something else happens that makes my response unneeded or at least much more targeted (thus less flippant).

I have no doubt I’ll be fighting this for the rest of my life because it’s impossible to purge the zingers that are just sitting there waiting to launch.  But maybe, just maybe, because of that wisdom coming with age, I can lengthen the fuses on those zingers and potentially even put them out prior to launch.

You never know!