The Utterance and Silence of Thoughts

Man is an opinionated creature. Regardless of whether he is fond of sharing his opinions, he will always have them. It is therefore vital that a man understands the consequences of both manifesting his thoughts outwardly and keeping them to himself. Dangerous and unwise to think that the expression of one's opinions is in any way similar to simply possessing an opinion. Remember that "we are masters of unsaid words but slaves of those we let slip out".

However, my focus is not on the perception of others towards us but rather the changing of our own perception upon ourselves when we utter our opinions. I believe it goes unnoticed that we are not the same individuals before and after the utterance of a thought. Before, we are merely an interested party. After, we become an invested party. To have a serious opinion on something only requires us to be interested in the concerned issue. It does not have to be something that directly or indirectly affects our lives, it merely needs to be worthy of our mental focus.

The presence of thoughts is akin to writing on a blackboard. Erasable yet a trace is left behind. Thoughts can be changed almost immediately, replacing thoughts that may have become obsolete or redundant. This mental process of changing and replacing thoughts require no physical action. It happens almost automatically. A big difference in comparison to uttered words. Opinions in the form of uttered words are different entities but still attached to thoughts and it is due to this attachment that we become different individuals after the verbal expression. This relation of the mental and abstract thought and the physical and concrete word creates an urgency for both to resonate. A friction between the two will produce a sense of mental and emotional discomfort in any sensible man.

This is what is meant by becoming an invested party after the expression of an opinion. We become tied to the word-thought relationship. Remember that thoughts are easily changed in silence and inaction while words require utterance. Once we have uttered an opinion, we become mentally and emotionally invested to its effects on our environment. We are at the very least interested in what others have to say about our opinion. Unfortunately, it then becomes easy to forget that our environment also affects our opinion. People are diverse and they change internally almost every second and that means at least one factor of our environment is prone to unpredictable changes. Unpredictable changes lead to unpredictable effects which will lead to our thoughts being exposed to factors we never foresaw. The sensible man is then forced to adapt his thoughts to the new information and he can easily do so. The same cannot be said for his uttered words. He is then faced with the word-thought friction.

I shall end this post by advising myself and you, my reader, to always train ourselves to listen more than we speak. To give our opinions time to mature in our minds before they are made manifest into this vast and unpredictable world. More often than not, "he who speaks last, speaks best".

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