The Perils of Being Meek and Mild
From time to time, during devotional studies, teachers at my primary school would confer Bible verses onto us, their charges, that reminded them of our characters.
I got, ‘The meek shall inherit the earth.’
The meek. Did they mean me? Did they mean that I was meek? To me, meek meant submissive, docile, weak. I ignored the inherit the Earth bit. I ignored the intended meaning of meek as being akin to strength, of having endured a period of silence or obscurity before eventually finding one’s voice. It became one of my most despised words, one that echoes in my head even today. I fight against it, ready with a bat to swat it away should it ever enter my orbit of being. The word flashes across the widescreen of my mind whenever I hear myself turning down my own volume, tempering my views — almost compulsively— to maintain an equilibrium I don’t even want.
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell highlights the perils of mitigated speech in an analysis of its role in aviation disasters. Mitigated speech exists on a spectrum, ranging from politeness and suggestion to acquiescence, deference, self-deprecation, even self-censorship. We use it when we decide not to complain about something that probably ought to be complained about. It’s when we keep quiet, or say very little even when we have something important to say for fear of disapproval from the…
