Sunday, October 25

Quit the sarcasm

Sarcasm is how a man says something true while keeping an exit open.

Justified29 Speech12 Humility1

Key takeaways

Say the real complaint instead of the clever version
Drop the joke when someone asks if you're serious
Apologize for the dig without explaining the joke

TL;DR

Sarcasm is how a man says something true while keeping an exit open. It costs him the people who were listening.

Say the real complaint

You know the move. Something bothers you, and instead of saying it, you say the opposite in a tone that makes it obvious. Then if they flinch, you get to say you were kidding. Clean hands. Nothing solved.

Hear your own tone

Watch yourself for a day and count the jabs. The one about how she always knows best. The crack about how great it must be to have free time. The flat "sure, no problem" that means the opposite. Every one of those is a thing you wanted to say and didn't have the nerve to say plain. You dressed a grievance in a costume and called it humor. The person across from you got the message anyway. They just can't respond to it, because officially nothing was said.

kitchen counter with car keys and a cold cup of coffee

Photo by note thanun on Unsplash

Trade the joke for the sentence

Here's the swap. Instead of "must be nice," say "I'm carrying more of this than I want to." Instead of the eye roll and the clever line, say "that bugged me." Shorter. Less funny. Lands somewhere. It feels naked because it is. The reason sarcasm is comfortable is that it never requires you to be wrong about anything.

Some men have been doing this so long they can't find the plain sentence anymore. If that's you, slow down and ask yourself what you actually meant. The answer is usually one sentence and it usually starts with I.

Let a joke be a joke

None of this makes you humorless. Laugh at the dog, the weather, the way your plans fall apart. The line is simple. If the joke is aimed at someone and there's a real complaint hiding in it, that's not comedy, that's a punch with plausible deniability. Make the people in your house able to trust what you say at face value. That's worth more than being the quickest guy in the room.

Today

Catch one sarcastic line before it leaves your mouth and say the plain sentence underneath it instead.

Go deeper

The nerve to say a thing plainly has to come from somewhere. Usually a man hides behind the joke because he's afraid of how he'll look if he says what he means and nobody agrees. Which is a question about standing. If your worth hangs on the room's verdict, you'll keep hedging forever.

But the verdict is already in. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 5:1 Peace means the case is closed. Nothing you say today will reopen it. A man who knows that can afford to be plain, and can afford to be wrong out loud. The joke was armor. You don't need it.