When it is easier to beat around the bush...

Human are strange animals don't you think? As a kid, we tell or signal to mum and dad exactly what we want. When we are hungry, we either say so or cry for milk. When we need the toilet, we don't even feel shy telling the world about it. When we like someone, we hug and kiss. When we dislike someone, we just say I DON'T LIKE YOU!

As we grow older, we begin to worry how others might feel, or we just somehow figure out that it is better to Beat-Around-The-Bush (BATB) than to be upfront. In the process, we forgot that the more we BATB, the more it hurts. The more we hide our real feelings and intentions, the more we end up inviting the kind of behaviour from others which we wanted to stay away in the first place. In other words, while we thought we are taking care of other's feelings, we end up hurting them and ourselves even more in the long run. Why do we still do this? Egoism.

Arguably, human is the only animal species in existence that is egoistic. There is no relationship between gender and egoism, although it is often attributed to masculinity more than femininity. The real correlation is intelligence. The higher one's intelligence, the more egoistic one can potentially become. That explains why children aren't as egoistic (if any) as adults; that explains why the mentally challenged are oblivious to their surroundings.

When one is egoistic, one is more bothered about how others perceive them. So when a man propose to a woman, the woman do not feel comfortable to simply say no. Rather she attempt to provide a response that seek to reject the man's proposal, yet having the man perceive her to be noble. In other words, BATB. Although is it not a crime to do so, not every man read the message as it is originally intended to be. As a result, instead of reading it as a rejection and move on, more often than not he perceive hope and challenge and attempt to try harder the next time, or he perceive sarcasm and respond in ugly ways.

When your boss give you an assignment that will potentially make you lose sleep nights and days, yet the assignment is not part of your job scope, do you say YES, NO, or do you BATB? How many times have you actually seen your boss say NO to his boss, and his boss pat him on the back and say good job? How often do you see people who say NO get a promotion while those who say YES remain saying YES? So while you happily say YES to your boss for that extra assignment, you feel good being perceived as cooperative. After losing sleep for a few days, you realize that your boss has other assignments waiting for you to say YES to! So you learned not to say YES so readily, rather you created some stories to try to convince him that you shouldn't be the one to lose sleep. Unless you are a top negotiator working for NATO, your BATB effort will be seen through. So you learned neither to say YES nor BATB, instead you say NO to your boss. Unless you have a better job waiting for you in another company, your NO will only assure you that your name will be next in line in the next retrenchment exercise.

It is unfortunate that YES-men get there while NO-men stay where they are even though managers say they don't want YES-men more than they say their prayers. It is also unfortunate that lovers enjoy agreement more than disagreement, however hypocritical those agreements may be.

So human beings have inevitably used our intelligence to transform the world from innocence to hypocriticism, due to egoism. No wonder it is easier to BATB than to say NO.