By JT Santana

Every once in a great span of social-media scrolling, something gets through the memes, political screaming matches, birthday announcements, inspirational quotations, suspiciously perfect casseroles, and photographs of grandchildren doing things grandparents are legally required to find adorable.

Something makes me stop.

That happened when this graphic, “The Power of the Tongue,” appeared on my timeline.

It lists six fairly simple ideas: words shape how we see reality; they can lift people up or tear them apart; they influence others; they reveal something about us; they plant seeds in people’s lives; and they can bring peace or chaos.

Simple enough.

Then my brain did what my brain does.

It refused to leave simple enough alone.

Before going any further, I have to give a huge, huge thank-you to Talisa for posting this so it happened to cross my timeline.

You have to love high school friends.

Decades can pass. People move away, build careers, raise children, collect scars, change their minds, survive things nobody knew they were surviving, and reach the age when sleeping wrong can apparently qualify as a sports injury. Then somebody from the days of lockers, girls restrooms, cake, and class bells posts one little graphic and suddenly you are sitting there thinking about the human condition.

Talisa, thank you.

You started something.

“They Are Just Words” Has Never Made Much Sense to Me

People sometimes dismiss hurtful language by saying, “They are only words.”

I have never understood that defense.

Marriage vows are words.

Laws are words.

Court decisions are words.

Threats are words.

Promises are words.

Diagnoses are words.

Obituaries are words.

“I love you” is words.

“I believe you” is words.

“I forgive you” is words.

“So, we need to talk” is words, too, though those particular words have probably raised more blood pressure than several medical conditions combined.

A few words can divide a life into before and after.

“You got the job.”

“Your test came back positive.”

“I want a divorce.”

“The surgery was successful.”

“Your mother died.”

“You can come home.”

Words are not decorations around our experiences. They are often how we understand those experiences in the first place.

That makes them worth taking seriously.

Some Words Move Into Your Head and Never Pay Rent

Most adults can remember something hurtful somebody said years ago.

You may have forgotten the room.

You may have forgotten what you were wearing.

You may have forgotten what happened five minutes later.

But the sentence?

Oh, the brain saved that.

Maybe somebody called you stupid.

Ugly.

Fat.

Weird.

Lazy.

Too sensitive.

Too loud.

Too quiet.

Too feminine.

Too masculine.

Too poor.

Too awkward.

Too gay.

Too different.

Too much.

Not enough.

Human memory has a peculiar sense of priorities. I can walk into the kitchen and forget why I went there, yet my brain is perfectly capable of retrieving a mean comment from 1984 without being asked.

Thank you, brain. Very useful.

That is one reason casual cruelty deserves more attention than we give it. The person saying something ugly may forget it before dinner. The person hearing it may repeat it internally for years.

That is quite a return on a five-second investment.

Children Listen More Closely Than Adults Sometimes Realize

The stakes become higher when we are talking to children.

A frustrated parent says, “You are impossible.”

The parent may mean, “I have reached the end of my patience and desperately need ten quiet minutes.”

The child may hear, “There is something wrong with me.”

A teacher says, “You never pay attention.”

The teacher may mean, “I need you focused on this lesson.”

The student may hear, “I am the kid who cannot learn.”

There is a giant difference between telling a child:

“You made a bad choice.”

and

“You are bad.”

One addresses behavior.

The other defines identity.

Children need correction. Teenagers need boundaries. Teenagers, in particular, occasionally appear to conduct independent research into exactly how many times an adult can repeat the same instruction before losing the will to live.

Set rules.

Give consequences.

Require accountability.

Just do not confuse humiliation with discipline.

A child can learn responsibility without learning to hate themselves.

Labels Are Convenient. Human Beings Are Inconveniently Complicated.

This is where the subject connects directly to stigma.

Language can reduce somebody to one fact about their life.

“The addict.”

“The felon.”

“The homeless guy.”

“The mental patient.”

“The welfare mom.”

“The illegal.”

“The problem kid.”

Notice what disappears.

The person.

A person living with addiction may still be a parent, sibling, employee, neighbor, friend, caretaker, terrible dancer, fantastic cook, loyal football fan, and the person everybody calls when the lawn mower makes that sound.

A criminal conviction does not contain every fact about a human being.

Homelessness is a housing condition. It is not a personality.

Mental illness is not a character flaw.

Poverty is not evidence of laziness.

Sexual orientation is not a moral résumé.

Gender identity is not a public referendum.

Labels are attractive in part since they save us work. Once we place somebody into a category, we do not have to learn much else about them.

People are harder.

People contradict themselves. They screw up. They recover. They relapse. They apologize. They lie. They tell the truth. They hurt people they love. They do extraordinary things. They behave selfishly on Tuesday and generously on Thursday.

Human beings refuse to fit comfortably inside one noun.

Good.

They should.

Words Can Give Someone Their Humanity Back

Language can hurt, yet language can repair.

Some of the most meaningful sentences in life are not poetic at all.

“I believe you.”

“I am proud of you.”

“You deserved better.”

“I was wrong.”

“I am sorry.”

“You are welcome here.”

“I am listening.”

“You do not have to explain everything right now.”

“I am staying.”

There are moments when somebody does not need advice.

They do not need a lecture.

They certainly do not need a motivational quotation placed over a sunset.

They need another person.

There is a remarkable comfort in hearing someone say, “I do not know what to say, but I am here.”

No solution.

No performance.

No attempt to fix an entire life before lunch.

Just presence.

Sometimes that is enough for the moment.

The Way We Talk to Ourselves Counts, Too

There is one voice you cannot unfollow, mute, block, or quietly hide from your news feed.

Your own.

And some of us are downright vicious to ourselves.

We forget something.

“I am such an idiot.”

We gain weight.

“I look terrible.”

We get rejected.

“Nobody wants me.”

We make one bad decision.

“I ruin everything.”

Imagine speaking to a friend that way.

Your friend calls and says, “I messed something up at work.”

You respond, “Naturally. You are incompetent and probably destined for failure.”

You would not have many friends left.

Yet people speak to themselves in exactly that fashion every day.

There is a meaningful difference between:

“I failed at this.”

and

“I am a failure.”

The first describes an event.

The second writes a biography.

There is nothing wrong with admitting that something hurts. There is nothing wrong with saying you are angry, frightened, lonely, exhausted, embarrassed, or lost.

Just try not to turn one terrible afternoon into a final judgment on your entire existence.

Life supplies enough critics.

You do not need to volunteer for the position full-time.

Anger Has a Vocabulary of Its Own

Then there are arguments.

Few situations demonstrate the destructive potential of language quite like two angry people who have both decided they are going to make a point.

“You always…”

“You never…”

“Everybody knows…”

“You are just like your…”

And off we go.

The argument may have started over a forgotten phone call. Fifteen minutes later, we are reviewing Christmas 2017, somebody’s mother has somehow become relevant, and screenshots have been introduced into evidence.

Human conflict can be remarkably efficient.

Anger is legitimate.

Cruelty is still a choice.

“I am furious with you” communicates anger.

“You are worthless” attacks a person’s value.

“You hurt me” identifies harm.

“Nobody could ever love you” is designed to create harm.

People frequently defend these moments by saying, “I did not mean it.”

Maybe not.

The other person still heard it.

Words do not automatically return to the speaker once tempers cool.

Social Media Has Given Everyone a Megaphone and Very Few People an Editor

The internet has made this subject much more complicated.

People routinely type things online that they would never say to somebody sitting three feet away.

A username does not feel like a person.

A profile photo does not show anxiety, grief, illness, loneliness, financial pressure, family trouble, or a terrible day.

So somebody fires off a vicious comment, hits send, feels wonderfully clever for seventeen seconds, and keeps scrolling.

The recipient gets to keep the comment.

Social media rewards quickness. It rewards outrage. It rewards the comeback that “destroys” somebody.

I have never been entirely comfortable with our enthusiasm for “destroying” people over disagreements.

Challenge bad ideas.

Correct false information.

Call out prejudice.

Get angry.

Use sarcasm when sarcasm has earned a seat at the table. Lord knows I do.

But there is a line between disagreement and dehumanization.

We should know where it is.

Kindness Is Not Weakness

None of this requires speaking in whispers or avoiding hard truths.

Kindness does not mean surrender.

Respect does not mean agreement.

Compassion does not require accepting abuse.

Some of the healthiest words anybody can say are:

“No.”

“Stop.”

“That is unacceptable.”

“Do not speak to me that way.”

“I disagree.”

“That is not true.”

“I will not participate in this.”

Firmness and cruelty are not the same thing.

You can defend yourself without trying to destroy somebody else.

You can hold someone accountable without insisting they are beyond redemption.

You can forgive someone and still decide they no longer get a front-row seat in your life.

Language can draw boundaries just as effectively as it can build bridges.

The Sentences We Leave Behind

Talisa’s post left me thinking about the strange permanence of words.

We rarely know which sentence somebody will remember.

A teacher says, “You are a good writer.”

Forty years later, that former student still remembers.

A parent says, “I am proud of you.”

An adult child carries it.

A friend says, “I believe you.”

Someone finally feels believed.

A stranger offers kindness on exactly the wrong day and somehow makes it a little less wrong.

Then there are the sentences we wish we could retrieve.

The insult.

The cruel joke.

The thing said in anger.

The apology never offered.

We cannot edit every conversation from the past.

We get another chance with the next one.

That is what I want to carry from this little graphic that Talisa tossed onto Facebook.

Words are ordinary.

We use them constantly.

Most disappear almost immediately.

Some do not.

Some become scars.

Some become lifelines.

Some become the story someone tells themselves about who they are.

So speak truth. Be direct. Be funny. Be angry when anger has earned its place. Call things what they are. Apologize when you screw up. Give people credit. Tell people you love them. Tell somebody you are proud of them before you assume they already know.

And maybe think twice before firing off that nuclear text message.

There is always the draft folder.

Use it.

People carry words much longer than we carry the memory of saying them. We might as well give each other a few worth keeping.