Nagging …

…entails its own punishment, and its own ersatz justification.
(c) 2020, Davd

Someone I very much love, is a master nagger. One day earlier this year, I actually headed out of the apartment and toward the great outdoors, wearing my sandals instead of my boots … because of skilled “let’s go now!” nagging.

Another day I forgot my gloves.

Before anyone accuses me of misogyny, I should report for the record that this master nagger is male …

… and canine.

I love Fritz dearly, and I figure for the most part anyway, his nagging [like his wagging] comes naturally. He doesn’t nag me by choice anywhere near as much as by nature.

Because that’s so¹, I can relate some consequences of his nagging which demonstrate how nagging tends to “justify itself” … and to punish itself. Fritz won’t learn from these examples. Humans who nag, might learn — and learn better because they are not who i’m writing about.

Consider the time he actually rushed me toward the outside door with my sandals on. If he had been patient, I would have taken another half minute, if that long, to slip my feet out of the sandals and into my neoprene walking boots (which have no laces, as readers who know about neoprene might have guessed.) Since he managed to nag me ten metres down the hallway, I took over a whole minute, perhaps 2-3 minutes, to pull him back to the door, unlock it, step inside (where my boots were waiting near the doorway), change footwear, close and lock the door again. His nagging success punished itself.

Earlier this week, Fritz managed to nag me to head out for his afternoon walk without my gloves. The temperature was below freezing, but not far below. The walkways and roadways had not been well sanded², not lately. I was more afraid of falling because of poor traction, than of frostbite.

However… if I’d been wearing gloves, I would have accepted his urging to extend our walk by several hundred metres. The route he wanted to walk me on, had poor traction, but better than what we had just survived. My hands were not in danger, but they were cold, … and so, Fritz lost some of the walking time he wanted, by nagging rather than being patient. Humans who nag, think about that: Patience might get you more of what you want, a little less quickly.

One of the main subjects of nagging, stereotypically anyhow, is “Take out the garbage!” More than once, Fritz has hurried me out the door for a walk — without that garbage. Fritz isn’t much bothered by that garbage going outdoors a few hours later or even the next day. People who nag, “Take out the garbage!” probably are bothered. And as the bare handed walk example implies, if a man hurries to take out the garbage, he’s less likely to take it all.

Patience improves performance much more often than it degrades it… indeed, I can’t think of an example of patience making performance worse. (I note, I’m not a sprinter nor any other kind of speed competitor … and then I’ll put a story in the next footnote about patience improving speed³!)

Nagging shows the nagger’s lack of patience and damages the patience of whoever [s]he nags. Patience is a virtue, and though not on the Classic nor Theological virtue lists⁴, it is an important one.

The motto of everyman.ca, since before I published my first blog here in 2011, has been, The World Changes When We Do. When we improve our patience, we better justify demanding patience of others. Practising and demanding patience are both positive changes.

Even in emergency medicine, you take the scalpel out of its sterile bag before you use it. Even in emergency policing, you take the gun or the nightstick out of its holster.

Pity Fritz can’t read.