Talk is cheap.

Except, I imagine, for the people who pay the salaries of Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Sean Hannity, et al.

 

And yet, we live in an information-driven society.  A society that, by virtue of its information-as-currency model, places a great deal of value on information.  In talk.  Because that is how we receive information, after all.  By communicating it.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say."  These days, I think some of us are talking so loudly that nobody around can tell if there is anything we are actually doing.

 

It's a society increasingly devoid of people willing to stand up and admit accountability for their actions.  Because after all, we just said that. 

 

What an engaging paradox for me to think about.  (And trust me, I've had a lot of thinking time lately.)  We value information; we respect and acknowledge those who know more than we do (while, of course, we simultaneously hate that they know more than we do).  And yet we devalue our main methods of exchanging that information.

 

After all, how many times do you act on a serious conversation you've had?  Or on something you've read.

 

To be frank, I'm far better and also far worse when the information affects my immediate existence in some way.

 

I'm far better when I'm feeling threatened.  And far worse when I have gathered data indicating I need to change something in an existence I have started to find otherwise comfortable.

 

And here is what I've learned about myself: self-talk is especially cheap.  Especially because the commitments I make to myself are the easiest to break.  The chasm between what I say to myself and what I do is roughly forty billion times wider than the gap between what I say to and do for others.

 

I would resolve to be more accountable to myself, but . . .