May I Ask You A Question?

So the other weekend, I was hanging out with a good friend of mine, and I had a question that I wanted to ask her about a new relationship of hers. But, I thought it might be a sensitive subject since relationships– particularly new ones– are wont to be. So. I prefaced my query with the statement: “May I ask you something?”

Immediately I looked at her face and thought twice about it. I thought, well gosh, if I get her to think about something that she hasn’t already considered and it ends up with a negative result, or a negativity in her relationship, then I’m gonna be the one going down for that. And that’s a big burden to bear!

And yet, immediately after that thought I said aloud, “Well, I have to ask now because I’ve already put it out there.” I had to commit. I knew I was bound to the statement. And it got me to thinking…

I wonder if prefacing touchy subjects with “May I ask you something?” or “Can I say something?” is really our subconscious binding us to the spoken word. Because once we’ve said it, we’ve chained ourselves. We’ve chained ourselves to the spoken word and we cannot go back.

Unless you’re one of those jerk people. And you don’t want to be that jerk person because everyone has had that time in their life when that person just refused to proceed. They just… they didn’t feel the chain of society. The chain of morality. The chain of humanity! They didn’t feel the compulsion.

Those are the sociopaths of the world. And we don’t want to be those people.

And so I wondered, is it our subconscious that makes us say it without saying it?

A bit of a trailer, a dropped hint, yes, but it’s something more than that. It’s a cry for commitment. “I am afraid to commit but, by George! I want to commit. And this needs to come out of me. It needs to be in the world; it’s eating me up on the inside!”

And so, I don’t think any of us actually ever 100% regret the “May I ask you something?” or “Can I say something?” I don’t think any of us fully regrets it because deep down our mouths, our brains, our psyches, our emotional centers knew that it had to exist in the spoken word. And not just the words written on the heart.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/from-the-top/