Let’s Talk About “Words Matter”
A few weeks ago, my mother and I had one of our most calamitous arguments ever. The next day when I expressed how upset I was over the situation, I was struck by her response–"Words oftentimes escape me as I try to translate true meanings."
I shared this with my wife and exclaimed, "It feels so unfair that other people can toss out words so willy-nilly without any care or thought..." I said the words as if she might agree despite knowing that our misalignment on the importance of words has been a pain point in our marriage. For years, my wife has insisted that the intentions in her heart matter more than the words she chooses to express them. When she responded, “Well, not everyone cares about words as much as you do,” I heard a new thought.
I have been proclaiming words matter for years expecting people to realize this as a fact that they too should acknowledge. It hadn't occurred to me that people might mistake words matter as a biased opinion they could ignore with no worry.
All animals have emotions – physical sensations and impulses that influence all of our thoughts and actions – but not all animals have words. Words enable us to reflect on what has already happened and on what might happen next. Words are the context that gives value to the sounds and images floating in our minds. The right words often take lifetimes to find and wrong words often take lifetimes to forget. Having mastery of words or at least being intentional to articulate the nuances of your perception, of your experience, opens the door for you to connect with the world around you with more honesty, more depth, more authenticity, and more purpose.
“The memory of who I am today will serve as proof of who I could be tomorrow.” When considering new possibilities or opportunities, we oftentimes lose our power to words like I’ve never done that before or I can’t imagine myself… In this way, seemingly unimportant words still exert influence on our thoughts and actions. Similarly, when considering relationships, having the memory of someone saying the right words is oftentimes just as meaningful as not having the memory of them saying the wrong words.
During the discussion with my wife, an image from one of my toddler's favorite movies came to mind: the scene from Hotel Transylvania where Dracula, the friendly father and hotelier, momentarily breaks character trading her docile harmless demeanor for one with intense red eyes, large threatening fangs, and angry eyebrows. I explained to my wife, "When you tell me I should focus on your intentions and not on your word choice, it's like being told to forget that I saw you be Dracula. It's like being told I never saw your eyes flash red, that the emotions I felt in response were misguided, or that my experience isn’t worth considering.”
A few years back, I came home from work and excitedly told my wife, "Someone told me I look famous today. It’s finally happening!" Without hesitation she responded, "You're becoming your mom?!" For as long as I can remember I recall strangers going out of their way to compliment my mother's attire. And almost every time she responds with an unexpected story about how her siblings verbal jabs during their formative years robbed her of confidence well into her adult years. I brought this up during the conversation with my wife—"Words older than I am are still directing traffic in my mother's mind.”
The palace of your mind is built from the words we repeat and dwell on until they become rigid and take forms that guide and direct and block the flow of your streams of thought. The words that we garner as we move through life build structures in our mind that influence how we perceive the world and how we respond to it. The act of choosing nuanced and exacting words could be reduced to just expressing one’s affinity for diction. Or, finding new ways to articulate your perceptions could literally restructure your mind and redefine how you judge your experiences, opening you to move through life with more confidence, self-assurance, and love.
Right and wrong aren’t measures of reality but instead judgments we have to make in order to survive. Right and wrong are collections of words that we cling to as a means of establishing a sense of normalcy. The only difference between the walls of your mind and the walls surrounding your body is that you are the only person bound by both.
I often challenge the belief that change always happens slowly as I don’t believe change is a function of time. Many times in my own life, hearing the right words has immediately healed wounds I had been waiting years for time to close. Sometimes those words come in the form of an epiphany. Other times they are are delivered by the mouth of another, spoken in conversation or on podcast or written in books. Where they come from and how they reach you isn’t very important. Words matter. Being intentional to find and use better words might be how you shift into a better life.