Sticks & Stones can break my bones, but words…they just break my heart

In today’s world we effortlessly throw words around, not realising that they can hit someone with more weight than we knew they carried. It’s not uncommon to hear the words ‘love’ and ‘hate’ tossed back and forth between friends, family and lovers. Yet do they ever stop to think just what that implicates, before it leaves their lips?

Love – noun [luhv]
A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person

Hate – verb [heyt]
To dislike passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest

The two words above, poles apart, yet not nearly the opposite of each other; for the opposite, and this is just food for thought, trivia, if you will, is ‘indifference’. To love or to hate a person is to be passionate about them, to feel fervently for them, in either a negative or positive way. To be indifferent, on the other hand, is to not care at all. We cannot feel such an over zealous adoration or fiery disgust for an inanimate object or activity, and to therefore say one loves or hates blue, for instance, would be a gross misuse of the word and the English language, in the way they are intended.

Similarly we find ourselves calling others amongst us ‘stupid’, or ‘idiotic’, again, not comprehending what they imply. Whether we refer to someone as, quite literally, mentally inadequate behind their backs or to their faces we are calling in to account that they are damaged. Unless we are medically qualified to make that assessment we should probably stick to ‘silly’ or better yet ‘inexperienced’ or ‘irresponsible’, if that is what one means to say.

I find it hard to find the right words to put my thoughts and feelings in to accurate speech, but then again, it’s probably better to say nothing at all, than to utter things we don’t mean. The second the sound rolls of your tongue forming the words you will emit seconds later, they’re out there, and though, proverbially they can be taken back, their implications will not easily be forgotten. They will resound through the person(s) they were directed at. This is a fact learnt through observation and experience.

We all recall the names the school bully called us, as if it were only yesterday. We remember every word our parents said that made us feel worthless, and we also remember the words spoken that made us feel loved. Words, unfortunately, though quick to leave the lips, echo through our whole lives, and for this reason, we must be careful what we say, we never know who may take it to heart.