Words

If you think about it words are amazing things. Whether spoken or written they give us the ability to both receive information and convey information expressed via our thoughts and emotions. Words allow us the ability to take the thoughts and ideas that rattle around in our brains and record them in some sort of medium, be it paper, electronic or another human brain, to be preserved and possibly remembered long after the time they were spoken or written.

Words are remarkable things. They can nurture or destroy, they can build up or tear down, they can encourage or discourage, they can help or hinder, they can heal or hurt, they can create incredible amounts of fear or bring much-needed relief from suffering and worry.

In many ways, words are one of the most powerful forces known to man. They have influenced humans and the world around them from the time the very first words were spoken.

They can influence nations to go to war or can unite people in times of despair and hopelessness. They can express bitter and angry emotions or they can bind brides and grooms with solemn vows of lifelong love and commitment. They can justify greed or they can express untold generosity. They can soothe a child’s broken heart or crush his spirit worse than any physical blow.

They have given us insight into the hearts and minds of those that have come before and helped us to preserve history so that we can learn from it, and not have to “reinvent the wheel”. They have helped shepherd parents through their darkest nights with comfort and hope and have shattered dreams of what might have been.

Words are incredibly powerful things.

I don’t believe there can be any doubt about the power of words, yet as powerful as they are, I often stand amazed at how careless we are with them. We throw them out into the ether without much consideration of just how powerful they are, with little regard for who will hear or see them, or the damage and hurt they have the ability to inflict. And yet, one undeniable and unforgiving truth about words remains… once spoken they can never be “unspoken” or taken back.

According to the second edition of the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary there are approximately 228,000 words in the English language, ranking it in about ninth place of world language word counts. Of all those words it is estimated that the average active vocabulary of an adult speaker is about 20,000 words. That means that the average adult speaker knows only a little over 8.5% of all the words in the English language. To make matters worse it’s estimated a vocabulary of just 3,000 words provides coverage for approximately 95% of common texts. Doing the math that means that only 1.75% of the total number of words are used the majority of the time.

Now, these figures may surprise you, or not, but what’s so sad about all of this is that even with the minimal numbers of words we know, and even smaller number we actually use, we still can’t seem to find it within ourselves to use them appropriately, with love and caring and genuine concern for the recipient.

I have been blessed to have had incredible parents and to have loved them as much as one human being can love another. They are gone now but they were two of the most amazing people I have ever known and though they had their faults and flaws they left me with a legacy of wisdom that could never be gleaned from all the libraries in the world. Two of those pieces of wisdom, conveyed to me more often than I’d like to admit, were… “If you don’t have something nice to say don’t say anything at all.” and, “It’s not what you said it’s how you said it.” I suspect these may sound familiar to some of you as well.

With that said I have been somewhat appalled by the use of words, hurtful words, in the media, especially social media. Now I’ll be the first to confess that I’m probably as far from being a social media “expert” as one can get, and that I do my best to stay as far away from it all as possible, but I do have accounts on both LinkedIn and Facebook. I try to only “review” my accounts once, maybe twice a week but some of what I’ve read makes me think I should be reviewing them once every couple of months or maybe once a year if that.

I have watched what appear to be good-hearted people post what seems to be thoughtful, well-meaning articles, thoughts, and ideas, only to be criticized, degraded, attacked, and vilified for daring to express a thought or opinion that someone doesn’t agree with (I suspect I’ll get some of that for this).

The truth is, some of us are strong enough to take the mean, hurtful blows but some of us aren’t. Some will have their spirit crushed, their ideas ridiculed, and will sadly shrink away from ever sharing their hearts again – what a terrible loss for us all.

Another piece of wisdom my parents left me with is, “It’s okay to disagree but not to be disagreeable,” which I suppose in some ways comes back to the idea of it’s not what you say but rather how you say it. Truth be told, I still struggle with this in my own life but I’m happy to report that I am working on it and getting better at it, although I still need to work on the “non-word” part, you know, “the look.” Unfortunately, or fortunately as the case may be, I don’t have a “poker-face” but even that’s getting better. It takes work, extremely hard work sometimes, but in the end it’s more than worth it.

Now, I fully understand that hurt people hurt people and that some people will always find a way to rationalize their bad behavior, and I get that there will also be some that will jump up on their soapbox and defiantly declare that the First Amendment of the Constitution protects their right to freedom of speech, got it. BUT just because you can doesn’t mean that you should.

You have the right to be a jerk, but it doesn’t mean you should. You have the right to ignore the people that love and care about you but it doesn’t mean you should. You have the right to waste your time and money but it doesn’t mean you should. You have the right to sit down and eat an entire chocolate cake right before going to the doctor to have your blood sugar taken but it doesn’t mean you should. You have the right to make fun of people and hurt them with your words but it doesn’t mean you should.

When did we ever come up with the idea that it’s okay to hurt another human soul with our words as long as it makes us feel bigger and better about ourselves? Yea, I know “sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me” – pure nonsense. “Names”, can and usually do hurt a lot more than “sticks and stones”.

Up to this point the emphasis of this seems to be on the negative, on the things we shouldn’t say, but what about the positive, the things we could say to make a difference. I’m a firm believer that the world could be a much kinder, gentler, better place if we would just find it in our hearts to work but seven small words into our daily lives and conversations – “please”, “thank you”, “excuse me” and “I’m sorry” – and saying them with a smile, killer stuff don’t you think?

If ever the world needed a kinder word spoken it’s now, but if for some reason you can’t find it in you, and believe me sometimes I understand, then join me in just being quiet and walking away. Your soul and the souls of others will thank you for it.