"Well, then, maybe you should think before you open your mouth and say things that are offensive."
Wednesday night is yoga night. I take yoga three times a week, but Wednesday night’s class tends to be more like therapy mixed in with exercise instead of just your garden-variety yoga. Tonight my teacher started class by telling us that Wednesday is a day of communication, and that tonight’s class would be focusing on strengthening those skills, but also give us the ability to do so gently. “You have the power to lift the world with your words, or destroy it,” she warned. She then told us a story of how her teacher advised someone she knew that they had that power, and then she recalled watching that person tear down a guy who was known for being a bull-headed egotist to the point where he cried and fled the room. “You have to decide – what kind of impact do you want your words to have?” she asked.
Funny. That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.
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If I had a dime for every time I’ve said something I wish I could take back, I’d probably be paying the neighborhood kids to roll coins until their fingers bled. Do I regret saying those things? No, because I learned from them. But the thing that’s been the most stunning to me has been the process of understanding the power of what I’ve said and how it’s affected people, even though I didn’t mean for it to affect them at all. It sounds stupid, I suppose, but I’m sure you’ve been through times where you’ve said something asinine and not really thought that it could render any damage because it was just off the cuff. Sometimes you don’t see the destruction in your wake until it’s too late.
One of the things I’ve been reading, hearing and seeing over and over again is people who wield words like they’re weapons tend to do so out of insecurity, and don’t believe that they register on the radar enough to land a direct hit. And when I think about where I’ve been when I’ve done those things, it makes sense. I think back to when I’ve been at my worst and lashed out at people, and part of the reason why I did so was because I didn’t think it would matter. But as I’ve grown and reflected, what’s stayed with me is the way it made me feel to say shitty things… and it didn’t feel good. I’ve reduced people to tears. I’ve made them feel three feet tall. I’ve made them not want to speak to me ever again. Why? Revenge out of spite, hurt, anger. And taking that eye for an eye didn’t make me feel better – especially when I realized that what I’d said really did make an impact.
I can remember with a disturbing amount of clarity every horrible thing that’s been said to and about me by family, former friends, ex-boyfriends… and it’s not that I wallow in it so much as I’m aware of it. It used to be that I held on to those words as if they were a review of me. Obviously that’s habitual behavior from the abuse background, and it’s taken time to deprogram. But now that I’ve had time to reflect and understand the people behind those words, there’s been a common thread in all of them – the insecurity, the anger, the self-consciousness that prompts speech without thought. And I wonder if they ever think about the weight of their words and how they’ve hurt. The man who screamed and berated me in my office to the point where I broke down and cried, the woman who was nice to my face and trashed me behind my back, the lover who called me a horrible bitch because I couldn’t sleep with the window open… do they realize how those things stay with a person? How it colors their experiences? Do they ever reach a moment of clarity where they realize maybe that’s not the way to treat people with respect, regardless of opposing views? The optimist in me wants to believe they do, while the pessimist in me reminds me that people get comfortable in their ruts because they fear change. It’s rare for people to step outside of themselves to truly gain an understanding of how they hurt others.
That’s not to say that I think I’m a perfect communicator now – clearly I’m not. Nobody is. But I think the difference now is that I’m learning, and with each day I’m getting better at it. I’m more observant and aware when I use my words poorly. In fact, just a couple weeks ago I was messaging with a friend expressing some sorrow over a situation, and when she responded with tough love, I laid into her until she told me she felt like shit, which stopped me in my tracks. I had to step back and ask myself why I was attacking her, and finally admitted to myself that I was upset that she didn’t coddle me the way I’d wanted – and that she was completely right. But more than that, I was fortunate enough to have a friend who would give it to me straight… yet as a reward, I’d treated her like shit for it. I apologized immediately and explained why I was being an asshole. She forgave me, and I was left with a reminder that when I feel that rage bubbling inside of me, or that desire to lash out, or that deep-rooted habit of anger that I learned as a kid, I need to slow the fuck down and shut the fuck up before I unleash it on someone else, whether I care about them or not. Putting that kind of crap out there is just unnecessary.
I guess that’s why they’re always telling us to think before we speak. But how many of us really do?
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