lies

One thing you learn, she thought, perhaps the most valuable thing, is that it makes no sense to try to make sense of most people. Most people are just the flimsiest kind of weather. You cannot talk to them, you cannot explain yourself to them in any meaningful way. So many people like this! It is simply not worth it. Stupid or willfully stupid. If you could see the thought bubbles over their heads, they would be full of stars and exclamation marks: Be positive! Communication is the key! They might have no real idea about the subject you're talking about, no real understanding of it at all, but something they saw in a PowerPoint presentation (or a lifetime of PowerPoint presentations) and an online MBA compels them to speak. Mouth moving not listening. Never listening. In fact, they're just waiting for you to shut-up, waiting for your negative spells to float away, so they can say whatever they were going to say before you even came into the room. What they always say. Still, once you've identified these people, these people who make no sense and can't be reasoned with, because they've already got the two or three reasons they'll ever need -- then your life becomes easier. You just avoid them as much as possible. And when you do have to talk to them, you just agree to everything they say and then change the subject. Or lie. Lie and lie and lie. And then they become like clouds, and you yourself something out of time.