Yabber

yabber
verb, intransitive. To chatter.

So much of life is nonsense: unproductive, using up time for no good reason. Commuting to jobs, whether in automobiles or on buses or trains, is a case in point. In many cases, the jobs themselves are merely ways of marking time until retirement and death. Even the things people do voluntarily fall under the heading of “Pointless.” The yabber of the schoolyard becomes the gossip around the worktable or the water cooler. The pleasantries exchanged outside the church after service are a step above that, but rarely refer to the lessons heard inside. A greeting to the pastor upon exiting, with the added comment, “Good sermon,” never fails to elicit surprise on his part. He writes it every week and delivers it with energy and verve, knowing that most of his flock won’t listen. Imagine his delight when he learns that just one of them has. It makes all the difference between his labor being “pointless” and it being meaningful. We were not placed here just to mature physically, reproduce, and die. Our minds are meant to grow, as well. They do so when we consider ideas that are not our own; when we exchange them with others and build upon them.

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.