Lord Of The Rings? Isn't that the one about the boy wizard?

Have you ever been in a situation where you have no idea what to say because you don't know what is everyone talking about?



And you feel so stupid to live because you never heard of anything and everything that seems to be the main topic of every conversation you're in?



When everyone is talking about books, movies and current affairs, you just sit there like a lump because you haven't read any of those books, watched any of those movies and current affairs make you want to scream.



Well, you have a problem, all right. And it's not about your intellect, which I'm sure is keen. It's your tragic character flaw -you're too honest.



Candour is a crippling deficiency in every polite social discourse.



Don't get me wrong because I'm not advocating lying. I'm talking about an art here, an art akin to bullfighting. A successful matador of the dinner table can dodge, weave and dance on the edge of disaster.



I'm sure you have seen people with the skill of lying. Like for example, if you asked him, "Have you read 'The Bartimaeus Trilogy'?" he would say, "Not recently." Of course, he never darn read it at all, but why disrupt a perfectly congenial conversation?



That's because he doesn't want to be left out. He doesn't want to admit it and lose out in a conversation. But it's true, why should you be left out? Why should let someone else make you sound stupid like you never know anything at all? Especially when he's Mr-Know-It-All.



So my advice is, bluff your way throughout the whole conversation but not in a of-course-she's-bullshitting kind of way but in a smarter she-knows-what-she's-talking-about way.



Sometimes, at one point of a conversation, someone is bound to turn to you and ask, "What do you think?"



But you don't want to say what you think because you haven't really been paying attention. You've actually been thinking about the handsome guy you met.



Do what I usually do. Say, "Depends."



And if you bluff your way through smartly, then no one will realise how stupid you actually are and will begin to nod vigorously at everything you say.


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Other than something about electrons moving in shells, the only thing that I remember that Niels Bohr said is, "There are trivial truths and the great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true."