You all know by now that I’m obsessed with words and definitions. After posting 2 blogs, Why Asking Me About Wedding Planning Annoys Me and Trigger Words I had the same person comment twice about politeness.
“… the polite response would be to say thank you”
“… Or maybe people are just asking to be polite and make conversation”
I found it fascinating that my blog reader used the words polite twice. So as I always do I thought about the word polite.
But see the things is about polite… is that I’m not really interested in manners for the sake of societal norms. I’m not interested in just considerate conversation. While I value respect and sophistication and culture I value more questioning why we say and do certain things. I’m fascinated with how we’re wired, how we analyze things. How our past and present shape how we think. I also value deep connection with people and societal pleasantries or niceties are just boring to me.
I think it’s along the same lines why I hate when people say “oh I’m so sorry” when they find out I have MS. Or why people I haven’t talked to in several months or maybe years ask me about wedding planning first instead of others aspects of my life.
And of course I’m a culprit of the same. Sometimes discussing large life milestones is the first thing that comes to mind vs. digging into other aspects of one’s life.
So what I’m pondering today…
Do we say things just to be polite or do we say things because we are uninterested in actually having deeper conversations and want to stay surface level?