I have found that it is often much easier and safer to think about our convictions than speak them out loud. The moment you speak your thoughts, you risk delivering them with less eloquence than you would have hoped, or worse, in the wrong context. You allow them to float in the air, vulnerable to the deconstructing analysis of others. If your statement happens to be particularly profound or careful, suddenly it informs your receivers that you have devoted a great deal of time to undisturbed thought, and that knowledge is dangerous in its intimacy.
But sometimes, what we have to say is just too bleak for words. Very few people want to hear the honest truth from their acquaintances, regardless of context. The pause that follows such stark sentiments is not awkward, for a youth half way through a growth spurt may be described as awkward. The silence that fills the conversation is the subconscious agitation of withdrawn waves before a tsunami. The explicit accusations and disagreement stirred by this one observation are muted but continue to rage in the minds of the participants, though if you must, you may endeavor to see their contempt shining through their eyes.
The occasional detached observer is not so occasional. In fact, we are frequently detached from the group or category we make a show of being engaged in. To make your thoughts known from such a harsh, distant point of view is altogether disrespectful, whereas bleakness expressed in public is merely unrespectable, though I find both refreshingly distasteful. A mind that has grown distant from its circle of acquaintances is as dangerous as, like I said before, a mind made known to its acquaintances. One begins to see a loss of texture and shading in their surroundings, the apparent vapidity of their social investments growing into a thin, hard layer over their sight.
And then there are the instants of acute hilarity in which an observer must make the quick decision whether to save their dignity or exacerbate the spiraling course of shrieks (I dare not call that laughter.) And if you live life within the embrace of individuals who have a more fundamental understanding of you than you are comfortable admitting, the context is never wrong.
