On Platitudes

My next admission isn't a traditional - or even intuitive - way to convince anyone reading to continue doing so, but it's one that leads to my point and so I must take it: I am not the world's greatest communicator; I'm not even sure I'm a decent one.

I'll stumble through the smaller talk of a social situation until the participants are inebriated enough to tolerate each other's actual opinions and frequently I'll have prepared myself in a similarly alcoholic fashion. So while the meaty portion of a conversation can find my teeth firmly embedded in it, the beginning and end cause me particular bother in the Awkwardness Department. Or maybe it's the Department of Awkward? Whichever sounds the most awkward.

My problem is that there's simply no creativity in our regular greetings - everything is another repetition of the evolutionary processes we use to say "we're both people and we're both here" and then, some time later say "I'm going over there and you're not". You'd think we'd have dispensed with these language constructs after millennia of using them ad infinitum; not to move past basic politeness, but for everyone to have recognised that they are unneccessary in order to begin talking.

I wouldn't say I'm anti-social, but I like to avoid these cringe-worthy conventions wherever possible. My goal is normally achieved by turning up in the middle of a pre-existing conversation and jumping on the groundwork laid by people who have already spat out enough trite phrases to get them somewhere meaningful. I'm not particularly proud of that, but the Internet allows me to be even worse as when it comes to initiating communication, if my would-be conversational partner is not able to witness my decision to not contact them, I probably won't do it.

Just look at the anguish even a basic note would cause - for starters, I'd have to waste a whole paragraph on "hello" (or variety thereof), a word whose definition truly escapes me - perhaps it is Latin for "insert something more useful here". I'd probably move onto a bog standard "how are you?" so broad in scope that any value is diluted away. I may even choose not to ask the question at all and instead "hope" that "everything is all right" with them. After all, why would I want my expectations of their perfect life to be challenged by any facts that may arise?

After a clumsy segue into the main content of the message and an equally weak exit from it, I would be forced to make the obvious suggestion that the recipient may like to respond to me, and that if they did I would appreciate them having taken the time that it had taken them. By sending them something in the first place I am purposefully interrupting them so unless they or I happen to be a sociopath (and I'm not ruling it out), it is something so obvious that to highlight it is pure, uncut redundancy at its most redundant-est.

Having said all of that, if the use of platitudes was a felony, I would be typing this from a maximum security wing of Her Majesty's least fine establishment. Well, it would either be there or just before I was caught, trying to spell it out in my own semen on the floor of a secluded cottage in the woods. It's my hypothetical arrest scenario, I'll do as I please. Then again, if I were locked up I wouldn't need to use it anymore as I would surely have been sacked with haste. Especially after it came out what I'd done to the laminated tiles in some unlucky family's holiday home.

For it is the formality required in business that trots out the Three Tiers of Regards. There are your regular common-or-garden "Regards", your gracious "Kind Regards" and my favourite, at the top of the hierarchy; "Best Regards". The best regards, that is. Better than anyone else's, and probably the most genuine you have ever been given. If you receive an email from someone and they haven't written "Best Regards", you must consider it a slap in the face. That person didn't care about what they were sending (and by extension you), and so provided sub-par regards. Whatever a regard is, anyway.

It's all pretty meaningless, but without this framework we seem unable to communicate; without it, what would we lose? I don't have the answer. Maybe in a few generations' time language will have mutated as to make platitudes redundant. Perhaps they would be replaced with a series of simple facial indicators, or a limb- or digit-based gesturing system that turns out to be even less efficient. But for now, this all I can say:

Best Regards,
Man Write Words