Implications of Not Saying Enough; Our Digital Age is Far Too Focused on the Negative

Whenever something happens that is not to your liking; May be you made a poor investment.  Be it with your time, your money, a career choice, or with your heart.  In an effort to soften the blow someone, may be even yourself, will say “You live and you learn.” But as motivating as this mantra is supposed to be, I feel that all of these years we have left it incomplete.  Recently I’ve tried to start telling myself; Live, Learn, and Keep on Living.  There is something about adding that little bit at the end, that to me makes it feel more true.

I think the latter of that modified statement is supposed to be implied.  I mean why take the lesson from a life experience if you’re not going to go on living with your newfound knowledge in your back pocket for later use.  But one thing I have learned, is that leaving anything open ended, even something as simple as a statement, can lead to a subconscious focus on the negative.

For some reason, Live and Learn just feels like you are being down on yourself.  Even reading it written here, the way it comes across in my head is more of an “oh well, you live and you learn.”  Almost as if you are saying, “ I can’t do anything about it now.  That result sucked because I made a mistake.  Hopefully, I won’t do that again.”  Then you go on focused on the mistake, and can say you learned something. Therefore justifying the bad outcome.

Now let's just ever so slightly change that mantra, and see what happens…. Live, Learn, and Keep on Living.  Is it just me or does it just sound much more inspiring?  If I put that into a fancy font on a white background, this would be a quote trending on social media’s “Word Porn.”  Why is that?  How is it that something that should go without saying, something that is so obviously implied, needs to be said in order to be understood?

In a digital age I feel like this is all too common.  I want you to think about how you read a text message, an email, or a Facebook post.  Think about what knee jerk reactions you have had in the past to things you have read, only to be told “Calm down, I was just kidding,” “That’s not what I meant,” or one of my favorites when it comes to social media “I wasn’t talking about you.”  Where does this come from?  I may be wrong, but may be it is because we would rather someone imply the wrong thing, than sound stupid in trying to get our actual point across.  At least in some cases.  There are those times when we are all just lazy and say “Eh, they will get what I mean.”  Only to regret it later.

I unlike a lot of the digital aged millennials have the opposite problem.  I tend to say too much.  I tend to overanalyze and then use more words to make sure nothing gets lost in translation.  So, I guess this entire scattered rant was just a long winded way of me saying the following.  Say what you mean, all of it, regardless of what someone may think.  Regardless of how they may respond.  Because if you leave it up for debate, they will likely think the worst.  When in reality, what you said could have made their day.