LivingLife: Who’s Fooling Who?

It is said that God had a very strong reason to give each one of us two ears and one mouth, well knowing that we need to listen to others twice as much as we talk. There is so much talk about talk. First, talk is cheap, literally courtesy of the mobile phone companies’ battles against each other and secondly just because too much talk and no action is just that – cheap talk. Which is why they say if you can’t walk the talk, take a walk, which in other words means we should be able to accompany our talk with some meaningful action not just talk, talk, talk like the pair of crafty artistes from a neighbouring country say in one of their hit songs. But a colleague of mine redefined the use of the phrase ‘keep walking’, a famous slogan of a famous gin with many coloured labels. There was this damsel who was just too full of herself, trying to display her obvious inadequate knowledge in a variety of languages fruitlessly and assuming that her laboured attempts at semantics was an invaluable asset and advantage. Of course many languages are an asset if you don’t try to rub into everybody’s face. In the middle of the drama, colleague tells the show off, keep walking and complements it with an upside down finger victory sign, shifting the two fingers to mimic the walk. Obviously the show off never understood a thing. Show off thought she was fooling colleague instead, yet the opposite was actually the truth. Talking of truth, too much talk many a time comes with too much lying, to mean deceiving not laying down, is what I mean. It is said again that a lie can travel around the world while the truth is just putting on its socks. Too much talk especially without a proper reason usually results in lots of lies, except of course if one is a preacher who gets his fodder for talk from the blessed book, full of wise quotes to depend on for decades of daily talk and talk. So the preacher gets away with talk, but not the salesman. Selling doesn’t mean rattling your tongue away like a venomous rattle snake, it means, first listening to the needs of the customer and fashioning a response to their need, even if it is a lie, but a lie much better coming after listening than a raw lie. Picture this; yours truly is selling women’s handbags. You meet a beautiful lady and because your veins are burning up with the heat of your blood rushing form the left of your chest you begin talking about the beautiful colour of your pink bag. After your ten minute talk, Beautiful lady says, “My favourite colour is yellow”. Yours truly stands agape, and tries to argue but pink and yellow are like, twins, you see……”Aaaaah, Keep walking” says lady and yours truly shrinks into a ball of shame. Too much talk just cost you selling opportunity. Instead, yours truly should have asked for her favourite colour perhaps and then gone on to say how good pink looks on beautiful lady, just for a change. May be it would have worked magic, who knows? Silence is golden, if you try to fool anyone with cheap venomous silly talk, it might just come back to haunt you one day. The human tongue is like a sword, and you don’t want a reckless fellow swinging a sharp sword in your way, nor does your neighbour. Do for others what you would like to be done to you. This Sunday, cut the cheap talk, and if anyone tries to fool you with cheap talk -Keep Walking, literally! http://Twitter.com/KelvinOdoobo