Sincerity — April, 2004

Sincerity, it seems, has gone out of vogue, having lost market share to silence.

In the consumer marketplace, sales of sincerity slipped as buyers flocked to the safer - albeit more boring - silence. Declining sales of sincerity worked their influential magic on Wall Street the way high-school girls in skirts convince men to get their cars washed. Stock prices fell, apparently convincing consumers that sincerity was something they ought not associate themselves with. (author aware of sentence-ending preposition) Making matters worse, some consumers began to chide and admonish their sincerity-using contemporaries. With the cyclical efficiency of a Kansas tornado, these market forces drained the life out of sincerity just long enough to allow it to be usurped by silence.

Being that I would like to continue this line of thought sincerely, I concede that I am not in vogue and proceed at my own risk of being chided, admonished, or worse.

Consider fondly, if you will, the uncertain nature of sincerity. It resides quietly just down the street from our homes, convenient and ready like a trusted Chinese buffet. We know its hours and its prices. We know the spectrum of quality its Asian delicacies can cover. We know that 'no checks acceptance' and 'close Sunday'. We know bamboo chopsticks have slivers. We know that although General Tsao's Chicken may kill us, it tastes damn fine. We don't know the last time a new batch of egg-drop soup was made, but we don't care; oil doesn't spoil quickly anyway.

We keep going back to our neighborhood Chinese buffet, and so we should go back to sincerity. It has its pitfalls. But, it also has its virtues. And, somewhere amongst those peaks and valleys lies a village that tastes delicious on a bed of pork-fried rice. And when the waitress brings you the bill for sincerity, she always gives you a fortune cookie.

Silence costs nothing up front, but it fails to promise the possibility of great fortune.

Silence is as lazy as the adverb 'very'. It works, but only for those who do not really want to convey anything.

So, go forth confidently; patronize your local Chinese buffet. Purchase sincerity with reckless abandon and be not afraid to use it in public. Sure, there are those who will flash their fashionable silence at you like so many pairs of Tommy Jeans. Ignore them. Lee Jeans may not be in vogue, but frugality has its virtues and my ass looks OK in them.

Thank you for your time. I have to get my car washed.

~ topher