Participastory suggests playful ways to interact with people who annoy you instead of getting angry, upset, or isolated. Even if you don’t actually carry out these suggestions, just thinking about them might brighten your day, ease your stress, and put you in the habit of thinking about others instead of just feeling them. If you are a thinking person you’ll know not to feel without express consent anyway.
Recently I decided that one of the interventions I suggested was a mistake. I didn’t discover this as dramatically as you might think, though.
I like reading aloud. I want to make more videos, and I plan to make an audiobook of Forgive and Take. So, in order to practice all these pursuits, I decided to start recording myself as I read some posts aloud.
I tried this with “Using Fresh Words to Defuse Old Tensions”, though, and immediately thought a big part of the post sounded stupid.
The basic idea still has potential. It is part of a series designed to generate new words to describe irritating behaviors to replace curse words or derogatory nomenclature. In this case the annoying quality is when people speak too loudly.
I thought I had a come up with a clever new word – loudpiquer. It combines ‘loud’ with ‘pique’ to suggest someone gets others’ attention by being too loud, either by accident or design. The marketplace of ideas will have to decide how useful, funny, or appropriate it is, but reading my post aloud made me shudder with embarrassment. Did I really think it would be interesting, fun, or funny to tell someone they could be used in a dictionary as a perfect example of a loudpiquer? I can’t imagine anyone would want to interact with that lead in.
So as I tried to view this mistake mindfully, I came up with a better approach. I still think that listening in is a good idea. And if you have the time and inclination, join the conversation. Find some aspect that interests you and ask some questions or share some opinions. If the loud person has noticed your engaged listening, she shouldn’t be surprised once you join in. In fact, they may be hoping others will join in, hence the loud talking.
But if any are surprised you joined them, or wish you had not, just say – “Oh I thought you were doing a hidden camera documentary about loudpiquing.” This won’t be a lie, because right now, you are reading about the potential for such a documentary. It could actually happen. Hopefully the person (s) will wonder what loudpiquing is, and here’s your chance to explain that word. You can explain that it’s a relatively new word meant to describe their current actions. Your chance to learn a lot more about the person will begin to unfold. You may also learn more about yourself through this new interaction.
You may not want to join their conversation or even listen to them anymore. At that point, I don’t know a smooth way to use the word loudpique or loudpiquer. I wish I did, and I encourage you to make suggestions in the space below. And if you aren’t comfortable being direct about how much they are disturbing you, just say, “It sounds like you’d love for me to join your conversation right now, but I simply don’t have time right now. But thanks for trying to be so inclusive. It’s probably best if we just have our own separate conversations.” Being tactfully direct is better, but with this statement you are politely assuming that the person has good intentions and their next actions may reveal if that is true.