Words matter. The saying “Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words can never hurt you” is a feeble attempt to prove otherwise. Physical scars remind us of pain we once felt, but scars of unkind words can reopen old wounds and inflict the same pain for years. A bully on MySpace once told me I looked like a dinosaur. This insult came as an upsetting blow to my preteen ego, and I would be lying if I said I don’t still look for pterodactyl-like qualities in pictures sometimes. Why? Words matter — even if we use words to say they don’t.
Some argue words are great because they allow you to verbalize your thoughts and share them with other people. This is both the strength and the weakness of language: I get to decide what I’m going to say even if you don’t like it. I can say many words without an ounce of substance. Words like “good” and “bad” can be used for both good and bad. Everything really is meaningless, and all this time we thought Ecclesiastes was just comfort food for funerals.
Words are my weapon of choice, and for two decades I’ve been trying to learn how to fight for good. I’ve come to the startling conclusion that learning to fight this particular fight takes failure. Learning begins with a child pointing at a couch and saying “door.” And it begins with a constitution that states some people are worth less than others. Reform happens when we admit and denounce our failures.
I see reform. I no longer call a couch a door, and our constitution has an amendment granting equal protection. But there are still failures. We fail every time we refer to a black man as “boy,” because he is not a boy and that is disrespectful. We fail when we use “retarded” instead of “stupid,” because those words do not mean the same thing. We fail when we say a person’s sexual orientation is a “lifestyle,” because that equates it to someone’s decision to go the gym more frequently. This list goes on for days. But in short, if words make another person feel bad, they failed to fight for good.
As Maya Angelou said best, “People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.”
This is not “The Little Mermaid,” and I am not the Sea Witch taking your words away or speaking for you. I am a person reminding you what you already know: your words matter. Fight for good.
