I used to love arguing

now, i'm just tired

One of the reasons I decided to be more serious with writing was that I felt my head getting fuller and fuller, to the point where my brain was melting and I had nowhere to put my thoughts. Because it took so long before I started, I also felt like my ability to argue well was starting to dwindle. The muscle felt flax and it took more work to get my mouth to say the words my mind knew. It was even worse when I had to argue via text. I love being right (as a lot of people do), but even that has stopped being a powerful enough motivator to get me into a proper argument.

When I was younger, older people used to tell me I argued too much. My parents, my neighbours, my older friends would all tell me I was too argumentative. It wasn’t as though I enjoyed being contrary, I was just very opinionated. I even won a few debates in primary school and got a state award for it too.

When I resumed secondary school, I stopped debating, but I didn’t stop arguing. This isn’t very relevant to this episode but I met a friend who used to say that he believed that one of the gifts God gave him was the gift of arguing. I think what he really meant was “the gift of stubbornness”. It is one thing I believe that argumentative people have in common; the absolute stubbornness to see a matter to the end. And no matter how everyone talks about how the best way to argue is to be open-minded, I will die on this hill saying that people like this enter an argument thinking they’re right and wanting to ensure that they continue to be right.

If you know me well, you know my mind works faster than my tongue when we’re in person. In a conversation/deliberation, I will most likely speak so fast, you wonder why I’m in such a hurry. It is only in recent years that I have been trying to be more elegant in my speech. Other people are in a better place to tell you if my efforts are yielding results, but I am trying. When I do argue, I want to state all my reasons for believing what I believe and then, let you counter them. The issue with this is that in the heat of the moment, I think up more reasons to back up my argument and I have to force myself to shut up. I am still learning to be more coordinated in my in-person debates.

A week ago, I got into an argument with my friend on WhatsApp and all I could say do was sigh. I could see so many holes in his position, but I felt my head get weighty and weary of the process before I even started. I was already tired of talking before I began at all. My friend was writing so much that I had to use the “Read more..” function twice. Thinking about it now makes me laugh, but in the moment, it wearied me out. If you want to win an argument with me, you should probably insist on it being online and proceed to type out gigabytes of words (even if they lack coherence); it’s almost guaranteed that I will sigh, tell you you’re not making sense and walk away. I am only capable of arguing in bits now.

Does this mean that I no longer disagree with people? God forbid. I am still a fan of confrontation, healthy disagreements and sharing my opinion on controversial topics. The dividing line is that I am no longer as inspired to argue out my stance on the spot, and I usually will pick a random time to explain my beliefs. I don’t like this very much. I don’t want to be too tired to argue, mentally drained before any exertion. I want to be sharp as knife.

Anyway, this is another reason I am on Substack. To be able to keep up with my thoughts and present them logically in writing. I also love reading works by people who seem very able to do this. I would’ve tagged them in this post, but it is getting late and I need to send this newsletter out. Maybe next week.

Tell me what you think, though. What do you think about arguments? Do you enjoy arguing?