The sun sets on another day…
Once again it was a stunning sunset. The sky was brilliant and the huge of bread and violet were overpowered by the shades of orange and the fiery reds that seem to take over the night sky. Twilight came and erased the day and brought forth a night.
I get a kick out of talking to people. Really, I often get a bigger kick out of listening to people. I know I have been guilty in the past but I tried to avoid the common practice of versioning.
No, I don’t know what this is called for real. To me, versioning is when people are looking to find a way to answer and not really a way to listen and understand another person. A common thing is for someone to give an example of their vacation and then the person next to them to come up with a different vacation that’s better than the last. Of course that leads to another discussion about vacations that’s better than the other two and might be better than anybody else’s in the room. Then there’s a guy that has to join in because his vacation was better than the other three and everybody else’s because he has had the best vacation ever. It’s mind-boggling.
I have rapidly grown in aversion to this because I don’t want to be the one constantly trying to one up everyone else. I have to admit there are times that I did, when people asked about things I told them, but I realized about 15 years ago that telling people things often leads to them using those things against you. It’s quite crazy.
Maybe not. Maybe we need that interaction from time to time and should enjoy a little one-upmanship. Nah, I disagree already. Maybe it’s better to listen and just tell the other person that things sounded great and you’re glad for them. I know sometimes that’ll lead to less of a conversation, but it will lead to a lot more happy times and not a 2-hour discussion about who had the bigger pimple when they were 14.
What do you think? Do you think it’s better to keep the conversation going as the pimple gets bigger and bigger and finally takes over the whole side of someone’s face? Or do you think it’s okay to say that that was nice, and then just go on to another subject where you can both converse and not compete.
So as the son sets on another day, I hope you don’t have to version everything you do. Eventually you run out of things to version and as you do so you suddenly find yourself wondering if it was all worth it. Skip the versions and just enjoy that other people have had a good time and maybe you did too. It might give you a better day. Enjoy yourself as you go through things, no matter what.
Sleep sweet, love life, and which version is this…