Vocal Rest

First of all, I hope you all like the picture that's with the title of the blog.  I kind of do.

But anyway, I'm currently in Carpinteria, CA. The sun is fun (haha, that's a rhyme).  I love it when the sun hits me in the face, and it really hits you in the face (in the most beautiful way) in California, especially when you are in walking distance of the Pacific Ocean.

Fresh out of Vegas, we had a 9 show week. We haven't even had a 9 show week since April I think. With that said, my body is not tired, but my voice is.  It's so tired that I had to put myself on vocal rest.  For those of you who don't know...use the clue (rest).  It literally hurts when I speak right now and I sound more like a frog at this moment.

Being on vocal rest sucks! There are many reasons why.  In my case, I'm working with two other people...and I have to communicate with them somehow.  Miming just doesn't cut it, and sending text messages to someone less than four feet from you is stupid.  Another reason (the biggest reason) is that you hear so much stupid stuff come from people mouths, and I personally wish I could correct them.  When I say stupid stuff, I don't merely mean someone saying that the "sky is red".  People can be really ignorant at times (mainly when making generalizations...well lookie there, that was a generalization in itself) and the one time that I want to help them, I can't.

I do think that a lot of us are on some type of "vocal rest" when it comes to not correcting someone's ignorance or stupidity.  We all here someone say something that we may consider stupid, ignorant, or downright dumb and many times we'll just let them be stupid.  Some of us (a select few of us) have no patience for stupid and confront what we heard...which can sometimes result to conflict.  But conflict is something that we need to embrace at times...especially when enlightening someone.  When it's all said and done, we've done a part in helping the human race.

I'm not going to go down the mushy path of helping the human race, be nice, and blah, blah, blah...I'm just merely saying why do we have to be silent in times that silence may be the worst thing possible.  When something stupid/ignorant is said it sits in a barrel and begins to churn until you have a belief that is clearly wrong.  Before you know it, we've waited just too damn (there's no other way to put it) long and now we have to pull out all the stops and call the fire department for what was just a small flame from a match.

I hope that makes sense.

But anyway, I was inspired the other day courtesy of a wonderful writer that I follow on twitter.  She quoted Malcolm X and I will do the same.

“Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.” --Malcolm X

When we hear something stupid/ignorant/downright dumb, perhaps we all should be quick to correct, but not in a condescending way.  Stupidity and ignorance is something that should make all of us angry, but not in a violent way, but simply in a way that we can talk to our misguided brother or sister and bring about that change that everybody talks about.  Even if there is no true correction, we have an open line of communication, which is something that we often miss out on anyway.

 

Personally, ignorance is something that makes me angry.  And the thing is, I deal with it almost every day and I haven't done anything about it.  Why on Earth did it take the day in which I can't talk for me to want to say something? 

 

Why do I feel like I'm preaching? Weird, I know.  But that's all for today's sermon, I suppose.