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Your knowledge doesn't help me

The correct way to read that statement is to emphasize the second word:  I'm not interested in your knowledge; I'm interested in your actions.

This refrain was my frequent response to my daughters when, following when I would remind them about one of their responsibilities, they would answer something like, "I know that I have to do that."  Great, acknowledgement is the first step, but there are several more (not always 11 ... heh).  This boils down to the old saying that "Words are cheap" -- something I wish I had realized before I spent a few years getting a degree in English.  ( :-) ... but I still would have gotten it, 'cause I got to read all those cool books.)

A similar situation would arise when we would get onto one of the girls and she would say, sarcastically, "Well I'm sorry!"  I would calmly say, "No, you aren't."  In that case, she really was not.  Even if she was serious, though, I would usually push back.  "Don't say you are -- SHOW you are."  Like the writer's credo to "Show, don't tell" implies, good apologies are not qualitative statements but are instead quantitative acts.

An important corollary to this idea is that there are times when words -- even the "right" words -- are actually harmful.  They obscure the fact that what is needed is action in a classic (though probably unconscious) bait-and-switch -- I came in looking for a way to heal our relationship, and you gave me meaningless words.  Even when words would help, saying them too early, or at the wrong moment, can still be bad, especially if the sentence or the context devalues the statement with either an explicit or implicit " ... but," as in "I'm sorry, but ..." or "I love you, but ..." or "Thank you, but ...."

This post dovetails with an older one indicating my preference toward action.  It actually clarifies it a bit, and I'm trying to say that I don't consider words to be an "action," just like I don't consider words to be anything but the first step in an apology, a promise, a declaration of love, a giving of thanks, or virtually any other meaningful act that we have somehow come to associate with throwaway lines.  The statements may be necessary, but they are not sufficient.

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