Not Responsible for Broken Windshields

There is a truck in front of me carrying approximately seventeen tons of loose rock. On the back is a sign informing me that it is not responsible for my windshield.

That’s adorable.

Don’t you wish signs worked like this?

Imagine if the framed motivational crap on your desk could actually be put into action. Your boss comes over to ask you Such-and-Such’s name for the fifteenth time that day, and suddenly your little quip about using the carrot as the stick becomes operating instructions.

“It was sitting on my desk for weeks, Dave. I really thought you would’ve seen this coming.”

That’s the beautiful thing about a sign: it can say absolutely anything.

The harder question is whether reality has agreed to participate.

NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR BROKEN WINDSHIELDS.

Okay.

I’ll tell the rock.

A declaration is not the same thing as a condition.

The sign can tell me what the driver would like responsibility to look like. It cannot, by itself, change what caused the damage, what could have prevented it, or who introduced the risk.

Responsibility is inconvenient like that.

Intent has the same problem.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen” may be completely true. It tells me something important about what you intended.

It does not tell me what happened.

We understand this perfectly well when our identity isn’t involved.

If I knock over a glass, nobody argues with the puddle.

But step on someone’s foot and things get philosophical fast.

“Ow.”

“It wasn’t that hard.”

Interesting.

The foot has submitted evidence, and you have elected to cross-examine it.

Maybe the problem is that an outcome can tell us something about ourselves that we don’t particularly want to know. So instead of updating our understanding of what we did, we start defending our understanding of who we are.

I’m a good person.

I’m careful.

I’m not that kind of person.

All possibly true.

None of them make the next piece of evidence disappear.

That doesn’t mean words are powerless. Some declarations matter enormously. A promise can create an obligation. Consent can change what another person is permitted to do. “Bridge out” can save you from an extremely educational afternoon.

But those words have something underneath them.

The words point to something outside themselves.

Trouble starts when we expect the sentence to do the work itself.

So maybe the useful question isn’t whether a claim sounds convincing.

Maybe it’s:

What would have to be true for this sentence to be true?

The sign has made its position clear.

Unfortunately, the rock still has momentum.