Dear Readers,
This post marks the countdown to the 100th post, which will be due on 29th May 2022. I will be taking a break after FC #100 as I will be travelling until August. When I resume, I will surely let you guys know.
I am thankful to all my readers who appreciated FC #90.
Radhakrishna made a point when he said that the way you say things matters. If you want to wish someone, “Do well, pass with flying colours,” you should not be saying, “Don’t do badly and fail.” The positive reinforcement matters a lot.
Damandeep says that the rule ‘praise in public, scold in private’ is seldom followed. It’s not that one should not criticise at all; it’s the words used to criticise that matter!
The post reminded Abhay of the popular good news / bad news jokes like this one: A woman was nervously waiting at the airport for her husband to return from his skydiving lesson. The pilot approached her: "I'm sorry, but there's been an accident. I have some bad news, some good news, some more bad news, and some more good news. The bad news is your husband fell out of the plane. The good news is he had his parachute on. The bad news is he hit the ground before his chute could open. The good news is we had not yet taken off."
📰 No News Is Good News
A Chinese farmer gets a horse, which soon runs away. A neighbour says, "That's bad news." The farmer replies, "Good news, bad news, who can say?"
The horse comes back and brings another horse with him. Good news, you might say.
The farmer gives the second horse to his son, who rides it, then is thrown and badly breaks his leg.
"So sorry for your bad news," says the concerned neighbour. "Good news, bad news, who can say?" the farmer replies.
In a week or so, the emperor's men come and take every able-bodied young man to fight in a war. The farmer's son is spared.
That’s Good news, of course.
It's easy to understand why the ancient story of the Chinese farmer resonates now, in times when the world seems much too full of bad news. You open the newspaper or switch on the TV, and all that you hear is not something you want to hear. Particularly at night, when you don’t want to be burdened by some saga or the other. Of late, I find myself unable to listen to the ‘Breaking News’ which appears on all the channels, with each one claiming that they were the first to break.
The cacophony that you witness during a ‘debate’ makes you wonder why the meaningful exchange of views has degenerated into a shouting match where insults are freely hurled at one another. My wife and I have given up watching the news channels at night. There’s nothing much gained by getting bombarded and nothing that we can do about something that happened or said to have happened at that hour. We prefer to see the newspapers the following morning. News is supposed to cover current events. But the way events are depicted on TV makes one feel a current passing through their body.
The expression ‘no news is good news’ may have originated in 1616 with King James I of England, who is believed to have said, “No news is better than evil news”. If you don’t hear that something bad has happened, it is probably because nothing bad has happened and so, no news is good news.
There’s some optimism associated with this idiom. If you have been waiting to hear about someone who is rather sick, and you haven’t heard from anyone, you tell yourself ‘no news is good news’. There are some people who believe that ‘no news is bad news’. This happens when someone tells you, “You don’t have to follow up. We will let you know.” or, “Don’t call us - we’ll call you.” I am reminded of an incident when the boy’s family took the horoscope of the girl and nothing was heard thereafter. After a couple of weeks, when the girl’s family reached out to the boy’s father, he said, “What is there to report? If the horoscope had matched, we would have told you.”
According to an article published in the Journal Of The Royal Society Of Medicine, one of the most basic assumptions of any high-reliability practice is that no news is most certainly not good news. Hearing nothing about one’s test report does not mean that nothing is wrong. Yet, the default assumption is the opposite: no news is good news. Should one assume the worst or hope for the best, lacking any news?
No news can also be attributed to one’s own attitude to seeking information. After all, news is information. If you are an extrovert, you may seek information and probe further to get the drilled down details or granularity. In the process, you may be accused of being over-inquisitive or being a ‘nosey parker’ (A person who likes to meddle or pry to gather information).
In contrast, an introvert tends to believe that if he ought to know something, someone would tell him and until then, for him, ‘no news is good news’. They are not the type who would venture to ferret out information. Instead, they are quite content doing their own work and might even enjoy the solitude. This can be somewhat counterproductive in a workplace. The introvert innately is not on the radar, and he might become a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ and lose out on opportunities.
Introverts can often be labelled as self-effacing and humility personified. Extroverts are considered anything but shy. They are in the thick of activities and even when they may have nothing tangible to offer, they stage-manage so well that they are considered as go-getters.
Quite interestingly, when an extrovert is starved of news, for him, it is a case of ‘no news is bad news’ and for the introvert who does not chase news until it reaches him, it is ‘no news is good news’.
News is about information, and information is power. The more informed you are, the better your chances of being taken seriously and made part of a group of well-read people.
But to make an impression, you need to have ‘relevant’ information. I may know a fair bit of what is happening in the legal world, but that does not make me eligible to be among doctors who are discussing matters concerning their field.
Then there are pretenders, who are a subset of extroverts but laid back. They appear very intelligent and actively be part of a group, but when the subject being discussed is alien they don’t betray their ignorance but on the contrary display rapt attention. They are careful not to be found out. Remember that one-liner, “He appeared very intelligent until he opened his mouth”. For the pretenders, intellectual chemistry is alien, but they are physically drawn to any group that has the potential of making them seen in good company.
People share undisclosed news or confidential information with those they trust. There are times when a certain recipient is unable to control himself and gives out that information to someone untrustworthy or unreliable. The news is no longer good news. Confidentiality and non-disclosure obligations insulate the news from propagation, and the confidential information is shared with a few on a need-to-know basis.
No news is also not good news in an organisation or a situation where communication is the key. Employees like inclusiveness and expect to be informed of the happenings that concern them. If there is a talk of the business being divested, it spreads like wildfire and assumes unimaginative proportions, feeding into the rumour mill with deleterious consequences.
This is no different in families. Discussing matters openly helps create a greater understanding and promotes empathy. It is always a challenge when you have a ‘nosey parker’ for a neighbour. Some neighbours are well-meaning, and some others are vicariously keen on knowing the goings-on in your family. I have heard of a next-door aunty looking through the peephole each time the doorbell of the opposite flat rang. You may feel comforted that someone is keeping a watch, or you may feel annoyed at the invasion of privacy. It is a matter of one’s own perception. Some neighbours scoff at you for flaunting an achievement and gloat when something unpleasant occurs. This is where one has to draw a line or build walls.
What about all the news that tells you that you are what you eat and then tell you what to eat? I think it’s another topic for another time. For now, I will leave you with a verse from a poem by a reader of CBS news, Moon Temple.
experts know everything
eat healthy things like vegetables
do that, experts say so
do what the experts say
they are right, they are experts
experts know everythingavoid carbs, they will make you mad
the experts are right
listen to the experts
experts know everything
Dear Readers, take this ‘expert speak’ with a pinch of salt, and please write and tell me from your experience, whether no news is good or bad news. Some have started believing that no news of COVID is good news. But I suggest you continue to take care. See you next week!
Simply superb. Truth be told like you have. Loved the analogies. Hard hitting.
Well said