1. Most people are very stupid.
2. That is not going to stop them from talking. Or acting as if they definitely know. No room for error.
3. Most people will rarely say what they mean.
4. Most people will lack the language skills to say what they mean anyway.
5. Or the social skills.
6. The confidence. The more distinct the subject, or the more rarefied, or the more respect they have for it or the person in question, the weaker their powers of expression become. But they'll still say something, if you know them. That will usually be upsetting, because it's off the mark, or it takes the safe course of banality, when you know, and they know, how inaccurate and silly the statement is.
7. People you thought were smart at one point will usually reveal themselves not to have been so. This can be more obvious if you've not talked in a while and then talk again. But it is also obvious if you thought you respected their intelligence greatly at a younger age, when you were fifteen. Or twenty. But then the years went by, and you realized, hey, wait, why do they say things like such and such?
8. What we want can make us think certain things.
9. What we need can make us think certain things.
10. What we think we need can make us think certain things.
11. So: Block out the noise.
12. Don't depend on what anyone says.
13. The best people one is likely to know in a lifetime get something correct one out of 100 times.
14. What someone else can do for that person motivates what they say to them. There are few exceptions.
15. Even when they're not thinking that way.
16. It just happens. It's human nature, save in the great.
17. One of those motivations can be making themselves feel better, which can play out on a conscious level, a subconscious level, or both. This might be because of how they feel themselves to contrast with the other person. If they view that person as just about perfect, they'll have a great need to find a flaw, and will apply arbitrary rules and double-standards to that individual, which they will apply to no one else they will ever know.
18. This is the biggest culprit.
19. You can't hold on to what you want things to be.
20. Here is how life works: You have to know for yourself. Then you find a way to get that out into the world. And most people get it wrong. But enough of them get a fraction of it right. A speck. Then all of those fractions and those specks add up and they show the truth. To numbers of people. To certain individuals. And even to the world.
21. So what do you do in the meanwhile? You let each person be what they are. Be what they are good for. If it's not a lot, or it's not what it should be, so be it. This person might provide an outlet. This other person might be an emergency contact. This other person is good at accounting. Someone else defends your honor, even in a cliched way. Sometimes this other person brings you muffins or a cake.
22. And that's it. That's about the best you're truly going to get.
23. Block out the noise. Because people are just saying things. And they're saying them for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do, usually, with what the thing is. Which they can't describe properly anyway when they do see it.
24. Realize that once a lot of people say something, they'll say it too.
25. This will be accompanied by a "knew it all along" type of declaration from them. Which can also take the form of, "See? It's just like I've been saying."