Talking more made it worse.

I finally learned to talk. That was the problem.

By Farhan Terubos · 19 September 2026 · 4 min read · Issue #3

More than ten years ago, I was out for a meal with a friend and a few others, and I said something I thought was funny.

It wasn’t funny to him.

It turned out the line had hurt him. I had meant it as a joke. He heard it as something else, and he was right to.

To understand how I got to that table, you have to go back further.

Ours was a quiet house. My father doesn’t say much, and without ever deciding to, I became the same. At school I was given responsibility, but put me in front of someone new and I had nothing. I didn’t know how to begin. Ask my old classmates or my teachers, and I think they would tell you the same thing.

Then I fell in with a group of friends who loved company. They liked to go out, to mix, to sembang. I watched them, and bit by bit, I picked it up.

It worked.

For the first time in my life I could hold a conversation. I could join in. I could make people laugh, or at least I thought I could.

That was the trap.

The skill arrived. The care didn’t come with it.

A quiet boy who can’t talk doesn’t hurt anyone with words. He just sits there. But a young man who has only just learned to talk, and who still only thinks about himself, has a new tool and no rules for using it.

That was me. My studies, my results, my own plans. That was the whole world. What was happening around me, and how the people next to me felt about it, barely registered.

I talked a lot in those years. More than I needed to. And I measured every joke by one thing: whether I found it funny.

Not once did I ask how it would land on the person hearing it.

That table was the result. When I think back on that whole stretch of my life, it is the moment that comes to mind first.

I want to be fair to talking, though. I don’t think it’s the enemy.

Look around any room and most people like to talk. Mostly about themselves: what they did, what happened to them, what they think. Some prefer to talk about other people. Either way, talking is how we connect, and that matters.

People need someone to talk to. When you have nobody to share an idea with, nobody to tell about your day, nobody to hear you out, you get lonely. And being alone like that, for a long time, isn’t good for anyone. I believe it can wear down your mind, and in time your body too. Someone who was fine before can stop being fine, just from having nobody to talk to.

So this isn’t a story about how talking is bad.

It’s a story about where I landed.

As I got older and a bit more mature, I went back to the quiet I was born into. Only this time, I chose it.

Here’s what I do now:

• I don’t speak unless there is a need. I sit, watch what’s around me, and listen.
• When I do speak, I say only what matters, and I guard every word.
• I don’t speak on behalf of anyone else. People who can speak will speak for themselves.

It sounds like a small change. It isn’t. It means most of the time, in most rooms, I am the one saying the least.

I’ve made peace with that. I’m glad I learned it while I was still young enough to change, instead of much later.

The more we talk, the more mistakes we make, and I’ve already made my share of mistakes with my mouth.

Silence isn’t weakness. It’s the cheapest way not to hurt someone without meaning to.

I also want to protect other people’s feelings the way I protect my own. That’s the whole point of the rule. Not to look calm. Not to look wise. Just to be careful with the people in front of me.

He didn’t need my joke that night. Nobody at the table did. What he needed was for me to think for one second before I said it.

Now I take that second.

That’s all for this week.
See you next Saturday.

Cheers,
Farhan