For today’s philosophy post, I want us to learn from Plato. Today’s teaching is one of his more famous ones, so you may have heard it. Let’s dive into this teaching about learning about a person.

The exact teaching that we will be taking a look at today is; “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” The meaning of this teaching is very similar to the meaning of walking a mile in someone’s shoes. The term play can be substituted with natural habitat or at work and let me explain why. Have you ever dated someone and everything was going great and then when you started living together, problems started arising? Do you start noticing some habits that you dislike? It's because you are getting to know the real them, aka you are seeing them at play. Their guard is down and they are being themself and that is why they are at play. I always say dating is a form of selling because you are trying to sell yourself to your potential partner and this continues even when you are going steady. But when you are living with each other the sale is complete which is why there's a meme about spouses letting themselves go after marriage. This whole example may make no sense to you so I'm going to give you a more personal example.

The year was 2017 and I was working retail and three hours away from home. Like always, I was giving the job my all, but I had some issues with upper management. The owner of the company had no issues with me but one member of the upper management teams had a hard-on for me. This issue stemmed from years prior (different company, it's a small world) and so I spoke with a friend about different opportunities. This person told me that they were killing me it delivering food by foot and that I should give it a go. I spoke to this person for a couple of hours and after the conversation, I quit my job. I was told that I would make a couple of hundred dollars a week and after doing it for three days I made twelve dollars. After this, another friend and I decided to go into business with this person. They talked a big game and according to their "numbers", we would make a decent profit. We decided to start small and launched three different ventures. This is where I saw the person at play and I learned more about them then than I did in all the years of knowing them. They did less than the bare minimum and their math was completely wrong and we lost a bit of money. I wish I knew this teaching before I started all of those ventures.

Why is this teaching important and why should you learn from my mistake? This teaching doesn't only apply to people but also opportunities as well, which is why I decided to tell that specific story. The food delivery opportunity that I was so keen to jump on was supposedly going to bring in more than I was making a week at my job. Yet, when I was doing it, I didn't even make my hourly (I seriously made only $12 in three days). The same can be said of get rich quick and opportunities like network marketing, we are sold a pipe dream and we believe it which is why we sign up. The problem is after we get involved, we realize things are different. Remember things aren't always greener on the other side.

Some people talk the talk but few can walk the walk. You need to implement this teaching into your life by becoming a genuine person. Be the same person through talk and play. Your actions always speak louder than words so let your actions define who you are rather than your words. So go out and make things happen.