Too Easy To Hurt; Too Hard To Heal

Happy New Year, Little Ones,
A long time ago my mother said "If you can't say something good, don't say anything at all."  She also said, "You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar."

In fact, Mother had a quote or a saying that covered every situation she encountered and they always made you smile.  She had a way of putting a soft touch onto every hard situation.  It was a special gift I have always wished I could have.

But she did not wish for that gift.  She earned it.  She read good books and literature continually and she had a mind that could remember details.  I imagine she cultivated that ability to remember and to quote big pieces of literature as well as small homilies that suited her and helped her to say a lot in a few words.  Wishing was not the way to grow that gift.  It took work.  I wish I had not wasted so much time wishing I were more like my mother and had worked a little harder at it.  But "if wishes were fishes, we'd all have a fry."

I wonder what she would think of the internet?  I wonder if she would write perfect words in short order that would put a fine point onto everything.  I wonder how she would respond when someone put into writing things that hurt.  I know she would not have used this easy medium to speak unkindly.  But what would be her message to her posterity today?

I think she would say "If you can't write something nice, don't write anything at all."

I have heard others say that the internet has given us the opportunity to say things we would never say in person to one another.  It is too easy now to vent what is going on in our heads without any monitoring.  What we think, our fingers write, almost without thought.  Then we hit "send" and off go our thoughts, unmonitored, uncut, unedited, and too often, unkind.

And the trouble is, it is impossible to take them back.  And there they are ... real things; hard things; words that hurt.  And amazingly enough, they hurt over and over again.  And no matter how hard you try, you can't take them back.

Why is it that we feel it is okay to unleash our anger, frustration, annoyance, disappointments, bad day on another human being?  Why is it that we justify ourselves in doing to another something that would be intolerable to have done to us?  Why is it we cannot live the commandment to "do unto others as we would have them do unto us?"

How do we live the commandment to love one another?  Will we be judged more harshly for those things we have written than those things we have thought?  Is it necessary to write everything we think?  Can we think that someone has disappointed us or let us down and not ever tell them?  Is that kinder?  Is it possible that with time we may learn that our original thought was not completely accurate or informed and that we are glad we never wrote to them?  Or may we someday regret that we wrote things and inflicted wounds and created scars that were cruel and unnecessary only to discover down the road that WE were the person in error?

My mother was correct.  Our words must be carefully chosen.  Now we have to choose more carefully than ever, because a written word is so terribly easy to misunderstand - there are no smiles, no inflections in the voice, no casual lifts of the corners of the mouth, nothing to indicate the intention of the writer.  Only the words remain.  And they remain forever.

In this day where we have the incredible blessing of instant communication, it is far too easy to hurt one another, and it far too hard to heal from those wounds.

I will from this day forward never write something that I would not say to a person face to face and never say something at all if I cannot say something good.  I cannot take back what I have already said or written.  I have no way to know if there are those who have been offended by my words unless they have told me so, and so far that has only happened once.  That was one time too many, but it was enough to remind me of the lessons of Mother.

Still wishing I were more like my mother,
Your Mother