Is it becoming more common to be less specific? I understand the general concept of “vague-booking”; we post a generalization of our experience in order to share an emotional experience without creating drama for ourselves or some specific other individual. I mean, I think generally our intention there is good, but… the meta message we end up communicating is incredibly easy to agree with… even if we are, in fact, entirely in the wrong in the context of our circumstances and decision-making. More than once, I have found, after-the-fact, that I’ve appeared to “agree with” something fairly terrible, when actually, I had no idea what had actually gone on… I only read the vague post about it, which, lacking context, seemed easy to agree with. Awkward.
…On the other hand, I also dislike drama, and tend to do some vague-booking chasing down the meta-learning available to me in every day experiences. 🙂 There’s a balance that I look for, and I hope (and attempt) not to be “agreed with” in error by people I know would object, if only they knew what was “really going on”. See, there’s the thing, right? If I’ve been so vague that it is not possible at all to ascertain what is “really going on”, then my vague-booking could actually be misleading to the point of deception, and that’s not at all what I’m about as a human being. So. There’s that.
This is where my morning begins. Thoughts about vague-booking over coffee. 🙂
The semantic and logical distance one must cover to get from “vague-booking” to this blog isn’t really very far. I use my real actual life to “sort myself out”, finding meta messages and simple learning in even some fairly complex nuanced circumstances. Sometimes that requires a bit of over-simplification. Sometimes, kind of a lot actually, I have to “sanitize” the details to avoid hurting someone’s feelings, or undermining their individual privacy (or mine) – vague happens. Vague is a craft. The point is not to mislead, but to craft a sharable narrative that illustrates a point, supports a useful practice, offers perspective or reassurance, or even merely entertains; the mundane details would often get in the way of one or more of those goals, and may even be irrelevant.
Being skillfully vague sometimes allows me to understand circumstances more easily without feeling as hurt by them. That’s also a thing. 🙂
I’m admittedly uncomfortable when I see vague-booking used to amass allies to a cause or to seek agreement with an opinion or “side” of things, though, because the lack of specificity in that instance can create false alliances so easily, or result in a feeling of betrayal once people understand more about what they’ve agreed to, or with. It’s an emotional dirty trick to use vague-booking specifically to “sound like the good guy”, in the face of strong evidence that indeed you may be the bad guy. Just saying. Approval-seeking behavior from super-villains isn’t something to encourage. It’s pretty easy, though, to get our friends – particularly far away friends – to agree we’ve been treated terribly, if they never actually know the context, the origin, the circumstances, or the participants, and only ever read how hurt we are, separated from our own actions, and the details of the experience.
Words over coffee… I’m not sure I’ve gotten anywhere with this, this morning… not really. Like the topic, itself, the outcome is vague.
I guess I’ll begin again. 😉
Evening Light 