This is the tenth month of the year, and so far, the year has been very tumultuous. But if there's one thing the year has taught me, is that I need to undergo a lot of self-reformation.
I can't hide behind innocence or simplicity. It's just becoming a pattern of mine that even I am getting fed up with myself.
The pattern I am insinuating is oversharing. I have a habit of going overboard. And honestly, when it happens, it feels so natural that even the person I am oversharing with can't find traces. It starts as a harmless conversation, something light, something genuine and honest, and before I realize it, I’ve already handed over pieces of myself that weren’t meant to leave the room.
The year started with me feeling betrayed when this oversharing backfired on me when the person I over-shared with, shared my oversharing with someone else (the person about whom the contents of the oversharing was about). Don't get perplexed. Just take another read if you didn't understand, and this time read it slow.
And now, when the year is coming to an end, another person used my oversharing against me.
In this capacity, I cannot just go and play the victim card; it's not them, it's me. I have a problem that I cannot keep things contained.
You know that famous dialogue from the movie The Irishman, which goes like :-
Three people can keep a secret only when two of them are dead.
(The credit of the aphorism actually goes to Benjamin Franklin)
Sharing things is just like that. I know it sounds a little over dramatic, but it holds the truth. Once you share something, you can’t expect it to stay the way it left you. Variation comes along the way. Besides, words have wings, if not wings then at least legs. They travel, they transform, and they sometimes return in shapes that are meant only to hurt you. You just cannot expect the contents of the topic to be contained once you have shared. If contained, then at least not in a way that will not be used against you.
So lately, I’ve been learning the value of restraint. Not the cold kind that builds walls, but the kind that guards your peace. I’m beginning to understand that silence is protection. The control over the meaning of words, as we may use it, is gone the minute it leaves our mouth. I have seen the consequences way too many times to realise that not every thought deserves an audience. Nor does every feeling need translation.
I’m still learning to go to the battlefield and come back unscathed. Some days, I fail, quite noticeably, and some other days I find myself on the verge of saying a little too much, just like the old times. But I’m also learning to pause. It does come to mind, it does strike. I'm learning to breathe before I speak. Maybe this is what progress looks like, not perfection, just awareness.
I’m learning that peace isn’t found in telling everything, but in knowing what deserves to stay untold (perhaps ninety percent of things).
By the way, thanks! for reading my 50th post.
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