Changes Unspoken, Feelings Unfelt
By Lore
- 19 reads
They say that the correct way to cook a frog is to place it in a pot of lukewarm water then bring it to the boil; similar applies to people… Not cooking, never cooking but if you want to introduce an alien concept to someone, make them more receptive to an idea or thought, it’s best to introduce it slowly and piecemeal so that, when the time comes, they’ve become so accustomed to the boiled water, they don’t realise the change. In many cases, if you’ve got the time and patience, this is exactly how I would recommend doing the more important things. It allows you to, if you’ll pardon the pun, test the waters with your target audience, set a tempo that works for both you and them but also, and most importantly, it allows you to come to terms with the changes too; there’s a distinct difference between theory and application.
But people are wrong. Frogs are fully aware of the change in temperature, they’re just frogs, and unfortunately for them, they don’t speak any language recognisable by human ears. I expect humans are similar; one day, they’ll look at what is and then on what was and think: ‘Hmm… Never used to be like that. I wonder when that happened.’ Then they’ll likely go back to whatever has managed to capture their fleeting attention and forget they ever thought about it for a bit longer.
Changes so slow they’re near imperceptible don’t give the outsiders anything to react to; they can’t react to what they don’t notice; but such changes can be huge to those who make them. They can take great effort and courage which is never recognised nor acknowledged by their audience. Add to that, such an experiment can other the researcher, distance them from their subjects but in such a way that they themselves don’t realise they’re doing it. Fear of a reaction can create invisible walls metres thick. If all goes well, the change is implemented and no one is any the wiser; sounds like a success story but it soon devolves into failure.
If the frog cannot tell the human it’s too hot, the human cannot learn a better way to boil it… Stretching the metaphor there. If you don’t give anyone a chance to ask questions, to learn about what and why you’re doing something, they’ll likely never ask. It won’t even cross their mind. It will yours. Not knowing how people see you, what they think of the real you, it can eat you up. Slow and steady may win the race but it also means that there’s no one around to witness your victory because they’ve all gone home, assuming the race was cancelled due to poor weather. The worst part is, they know. You’ve been slowly changing things for so long that people start assuming you told them ages ago; never realising the true extent to the experiment. They don’t question what has always been, no one does.
That’s the trade. You get that which you’ve always wanted but you will be left with a hole where the people you would have met, the conversations you would have had and the feelings you would have felt should have gone. Maybe, one day, that hole will be filled. One day, you’ll muster the courage to grab a shovel and ask the questions yourself, start the conversations. But it takes time. Slowly but surely, the hole can be filled and, like that frog in boiling water, you’ll forget it was ever there.
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