"Sticks and stones can break your bones but words can never hurt you."
Truth and lies.
Physically, words can never hurt you, this is true indeed. But words can hurt you on a deeper, more permanent level.
Lately, my heart has been filled with the things that others do that are hurtful, things done out of spite and things done unintentionally even.
There are so many derogatory names people use without even thinking. "Retard(ed)." Homosexual slurs, racial slurs. "Fat." And the list can go on and on.
Sometimes, these things are so embedded in our culture we don't think twice about what we're saying.
But we should. We should think twice, three times. Count to ten and then speak. What you say flippantly may effect someone deeply on an emotional level.
Other times, we know exactly what we're saying. Exactly. We say it out of meanness and spite and hatred and anger. We intend to cut with those words that fly out of our mouths like darts hell bent on killing someone's spirit.
As I move through this world attempting to shield my daughter from the hatred, I realize just how little we think of what we say. I think back on things I said, years ago, and my heart hurts. I wish I could take them all back.
But we can't take what we say back. Once it's in the air, it no longer belongs to us. It belongs to time. And I want to change the fabric of time, of the future, now.
This is so true. Those words can some how get trapped in our heads never to be released.
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