I have this theory that serves me fairly well in our information-overloaded era. It’s the idea that if something takes more than a sentence to explain, it’s probably poorly thought out, or contains some kind of deception or over-justification. This plays out most commonly in personal relationships of course, when you ask your partner why they didn’t take out the garbage when it was their turn, and 30 minutes later you’re engaged in an argument about the passive aggressive barb they threw into their response, which, if they had been being honest in the first place, would have been something like “Because I didn’t feel like it” or “Because I forgot”.
Of course, I’ve just shattered my own rule here, but try it some time. Try rendering your long-winded, polysyllabic explanations as simple sentences. If you’re talking about Quantum Physics or religion, you might have a problem, but most of daily life doesn’t concern such lofty and complex topics.
Do you agree?
