Just say what you see ... ???

Amongst the flotsam and natural driftwood, the well-washed dead seagull remains and the seaweed on the beach today, I saw a crushed coke can and a little green plastic drinks lid.
Litter on the beach is horrible, but I find walking along the tideline, looking at the variation, interesting and strangely calming. Things that are at first ugly or out-of-place deserve a second look and a bit of thought, I always feel.

I looked closer at the green bottle lid
Some little green hairy things that were covering it were so very tiny that I couldn't see what they were. It looked more like carpet fluff or dirty algae.
So I took a photo and zoomed in.
It was in fact a beautiful little microcosm - a mini underwater world that had washed up on the beach. Tiny shells, almost invisible to the naked eye were clinging to the lid and squiggly seaplants were spreading themselves over the plastic so that, had it stayed in the sea, soon the lid would no longer look like plastic but a living thing.

This was a home. It was sustaining life and it was very interesting. It wasn't a conventionally beautiful, particularly healthily-derived home environment. But it was alive and I for one decided it was no longer horrible but quite impressive.

There was a difference between what I thought I saw and what I really saw.

I believe we should apply this approach to people too.

Just say what's on your mind ...??? (as Donavon Frankenreiter says in the opening of his single, 'What 'Cha Know About')

Well, how about 'Just stop and look again, decide whether you were right, and whether you actually need to say anything after all' ...?
Catchy, huh? ;)

There's a slang word for people that just open their mouths and let rip.

Sometimes people do it eloquently with marvellously choice words that they've learnt by mixing with other wordy types. Sometimes people have a magnificent presence, tremendous body language, an impressive accent perhaps. Some people are merely proud of what they consider to be their own 'honesty'.
They're all still just being a gobshite, albeit an eloquent gobshite, if they are only 'saying what they see' and not 1. what they've thought about, 2.what they know about and 3. remembered to omit anything unnecessarily hurtful.

Looking at things through one pair of eyes is never enough.
No one is that clever.

No one.

(not even me!)

PS. If you're one of my Twitter or facebook pals and don't have a blipfoto account but would like the option to comment occasionally then send me a message and I'll send you an invitation.