One of my many struggles with right speech is waiting to speak until asked. I have enough opinions for a small village, and sometimes they just want to bubble out of me. However, that urge is not really communication, and it can turn off the path and become minding someone's else's mindstream, lecturing, and blowing off steam. These habits of mine are best done when no one else is in the room. Lecturing is a leftover of teaching junior college. I was sometimes attempting to inject opinions and caring into students with neither. It never was successful, but that didn't stop me.
Minding someone else's mindstream is tempting, because anyone else's mind feels more interesting than my own, and looking into my own mind can be quite distressing. False feelings of control bloom wildly when I think I know what's best for another or even what they're thinking. It's reassuring but extremely deluded. The arrogance is shocking, and of course, I absolutely hate it when someone else tries to tell me what I'm thinking and feeling. I don't even like the question to be asked. Oh, dear, well, back to my own mindstream, if I must.
Blowing off steam, if I recognize that is where I'm headed, needs no witnesses, or should I say, victims. I can talk to myself, write an email and erase it, write a letter and burn it, punch pillows or, my favorite, eat popcorn. As long as I'm not harming anyone else, it's an outlet, and it can be a shortcut to the longed for cool-down, then calm sitting to see if there is an issue I really need to address with another, or I need to figure out how not to be in a similar situation again. Rational thought has it's place here.
There's an impulsivity at work here that doesn't work for me, not in the kind of situations where I can feel steam arising. I'm the little engine that could, but shouldn't.
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