The following text may come across as cheeky – and that is intentional. It’s the most reliable way to get the message exactly where I want it to go.
“It’s that simple.” Of course it is. You see someone else’s problem and immediately know what’s what. No hesitation, no questions, no idea what the actual situation is – but the solution is already on the table. Impressive how quickly that works.
Want to know where that certainty comes from? Not from insight. It comes from knowing the problem. Not as an observer, but from the inside, personally. And because you know it, you consider yourself qualified to weigh in. How far you’ve got with it yourself doesn’t matter in the slightest. That doesn’t determine whether you judge – only how convinced you sound when you do.
There are three kinds of people who talk like this, and from the outside you can’t hear the difference.
The first have actually dealt with their problem. Been through it, understood it, got it under control. Their insight is genuine and might even help someone else – if they shared it instead of throwing it in their face.
The second haven’t solved their problem at all, but have successfully put it off for years. They know it so well because they go to bed with it every night without ever touching it. They’d rather not have anyone bring it up with them, thank you very much. But when it comes to someone else, they immediately know exactly where to stick their finger.
And then there’s the third kind. They don’t know the problem from the inside at all. They know only its surface. A few visible facts, perhaps a similar story, perhaps only the outcome. That’s still enough for a judgement. Because if something looks simple from the outside, apparently it must be just as simple from the inside. The missing information isn’t perceived as a gap; it’s simply filled in with certainty.
They all sound equally certain. Equally competent. No one can tell which kind is speaking.
And that’s really the joke of it: none of the three has to make the effort to truly understand the other person. The answer is already there before anyone has actually looked – for the first, it comes from their own experience; for the second, from their own repression; for the third, from the gap they’ve filled with their own certainty. Wherever it comes from, all you have to do is send it out, to the right person, at the right moment. No effort, no trouble, no thinking required. A highly resource-efficient approach: you spare yourself the actual looking and get to seem superior at the same time. Two birds with one stone.
It’s that simple.
Only your own uncertainties – those are different, of course. They’re difficult, stubborn, almost impossible to grasp. No one knows what that’s like. Not a single person on this planet.
❤️
Written on 14 August 2026 at 12:30. © 2026 Whisper7. All rights reserved.