Thought Bubble from a Fortune

If you’re anything like me, you think entirely too much. You think everything over four times before you say a word to anyone, answer a question or sometimes even make a movement. It’s very inconvenient to be this way, because while you often think of the perfect thing to say, the moment in time where it needed to be said has already passed. I live out the majority of a scenario in my head before I say a word. I am consumed, unfortunately, by the fact that what I have to say may hurt someone. I have been hurt with words, and for those of you who believe that words can’t hurt have obviously never experienced the negative side of life. If you believe that words don’t have the power to break you, you clearly live in a bubble.

Consider, if only for a moment, the power an insult or harsh criticism can have on your self esteem. We are taught as kids to be ‘rubber’ and to just let these mean and hateful words bounce off of us. But as we mature and grow older, the negative words become more meaningful and the people who cut us down are the ones we love the most. It’s an unfortunate fact that we face whether we like it, or not. Sometimes, even silence can break our heart the most. C.S Lewis once said, “Spiteful words may hurt your feeling, but silence breaks your heart.” As little as we may think of not talking to someone, maybe because we have simply nothing nice to say, can hurt a heart that is already crumbling. We don’t consider the pain our actions, or not actions, have on other people. I have made the mistake of speaking before I think, and the consequences were monstrous. Maybe the things I had to say were nothing but truths, but the way in which they were presented were absolutely catastrophic. I had felt the same way about this person for years, and he never thought before he spoke to me. I figured that I would ‘give it to him’ and just tell him exactly what I had already told her a hundred times in my mind. But once I let the flood gates loose and told him all of the things I had wanted to say, all I could do was cry. Not because I was glad that this man had finally gotten what he deserved, but because I was truly disappointed in myself. I felt as though what I had hurt his heart, and I felt that I was truly understanding of what it means for words to hurt. He had no comeback for any of my retaliations, and I believe that I hurt him with my words. From then, I silently promised myself to watch what my words.

Alternatively, positive words are the best things in the world. How wonderful does it feel to know the way someone positively feels about you? How great is it to be reminded that you’re special, and you’re loved? I know a girl who doesn’t understand my reasoning behind kindness. She always asks, “Why are you being so nice to her? You don’t even know her!” But I don’t have a reason to be mean to her, really. I only have reasons to be nice. I ate at a questionable Chinese restaurant once, something I would never recommend. The fortune cookie, however, was strangely accurate. “All of the darkness in the world cannot put out a single candle”. I have mentioned this fabulously versatile fortune once before in an earlier post, but I’ll spin another perspective that only time has shown me. If we watch our words, and consider them carefully, maybe we can light a candle in someone’s heart. As crazy as it seems, you can truly never know the impact you have on people. The amount of power your words have are sharper than any two edged sword, but if we use the sword to slice bread, or cut flowers for someone, maybe the light we set aflame will be so powerful that we could change the world. Random Acts of Kindness, they sound stupid at first, but think: how amazing do you feel when you get a compliment. When someone helps you pick your flailing papers up off the ground after you dropped your binder on the way to class, it may not make your day, but you definitely feel important.  Giving someone else that feeling of importance will automatically give you a sense of importance. Just because you don’t know someone, doesn’t make them. Don’t judge a book by the cover; know the story before you judge.

One person may only make a ripple in the pond of the world, but just think: if we started a chain of Random Kindness, we could make a tsunami! Then, Random Kindness wouldn’t be kindness; it’d be a better world. All of this comes to me from an old fortune cookie fortune I found.