The era of instant messaging means that we have the luxury to be lazy with our words. Adding colourful hearts and emoticons at the end of our messages has become the sure-fire way of whispering sweetnothings, delivering news and softening our point.
It also sometimes provides an easy way out when it comes to honouring our word. Sometimes we overcommit and the temptation to shoot off a text laden with lovely, happy, apologetic emoticons bites pretty strong- but what are you going to do: fish or cut bait? My inner granny calls every evening. Most of the time, I commit to things and Granny M shouts: “But I just wanna go read in the depths of my doona!” and so I negotiate with myself in a circuitous dialogue which ends with: “Just go, just GO, you’ll have fun”. And so I go. And then I’m glad I went- because if I hadn’t, I would’ve felt like a legless flamingo floundering in a crazyland of manic emoticons.
I think a psychic I once saw said it best: “Don’t make promises you know you won’t keep, because it’s so much harder to get out of them and you’ll create more drama than it’s worth.” Word, psychic—wiser words were never spoken.
