Identifying Someone’s True Agenda

Sometimes you need more than one conversation or article to figure it out

Bitten apple by Alexas_Fotos from Pixabay

If someone tells you about the time their grandma baked an apple cobbler and the crumbly topping tasted like it had too much cinnamon and they swore never to eat an apple cobbler again, you might think they’re primarily trying to tell you something about their grandma, or about themselves, or about the perils of cinnamon.

If they later tell you they don’t like apple orchards because they’re afraid of bees, you might wonder if they’re allergic to bees.

There isn’t enough information in any one of those conversations to reveal to you what their true agenda is.

But if you later hear them complain about

• the rising price of apples
• the irregular shape of some apples
• the unsatisfying crunch of their least favorite kind of apple
• the unpleasing color of apple juice
• the cyanide in apple seeds
• the region’s stereotype for its own variety of apple
• the mistaken belief that everyone likes apples
• the effort required to grow apples
• the publisher that rejected their book proposal…