Please and Thank You

I've never written anything important before.

People have lied to me and told me otherwise, but I know myself - I have to, to keep my head. You see, I'm quite used to the friendly praise, the respectfully reserved red ink scantily dribbled on my papers, and I've received my undeserved share of exhortations concerning my bright and successful future as a writer. For the longest time I cast these encouraging words aside, mainly because I felt people "weren't being real with me". Not anymore. Today marks the first day I've considered maybe it's not that people aren't being real with me, but it's more so that there aren't any real people out there.

I contend that 95% of praise is cursory, or reflexive. Instinctual. People say "good job" because it's easier than saying "bad job". Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, and I'm not even saying these people are being insincere. I'm just saying most people instinctively praise other people because it brings a swifter end to that part of their day, more specifically their time with you.

Uncorrupted praise is almost offensive in a way. When friends shower absolute praise upon other friends, it's borderline disheartening because the encouragement is often so shallow that it goes beyond the basic, surface-level insincerity you might expect from your friends. It's far worse than if they didn't like your work at all. At least if one of your friends didn't like your work, you would know deep down somewhere that he or she at least somewhat thought about your work critically, but perfect praise reveals your friends had no passing thought at all about whatever it is that you did. They like your work because they like you, and that's the way it is.

Don't even bother to tempt yourselves with the follow-up questions, like: "Oh what did you like about it?", or "What was your favorite part?" These questions will only exasperate your friends and antagonize an already tired and mutually self-absorbed conversation, so don't even fool yourself they're even remotely interested in anything you do.

The first rules of etiquette we learned as children taught us the invaluable folkways of "please and thank you". Just stop. We don't mean it; we just say it. We say it because we should. We say please and thank you and congratulations and happy birthday new year merry Christmas because these are lingual precursors meant to preface and determine respect in a request or conversation, not because we're determinately friendly or pleading and grateful for favors rendered.

Why can't we just admit we want things? Salt. The direct approach. I want salt. Give me the salt. You're going to get the salt, please and thank you not required. The result will be the same, and if we all just unshackled ourselves and cast off the social weight of common courtesy and instead embraced the present reality of direct desires, then maybe we together would be participating in something slightly closer to real communication.

Basically, tell me my work would be better without all the adjectives. Please and thank you.