subject: Why It Is A Good Idea To Think Before Speaking In Your Relationships [print this page] People find themselves involved in many different types of relationships during their lifetimes. The earliest one is the one between parent and child. As we grow we constantly add new ones. We develop relationships as friends, colleagues, lovers and spouses. Sometimes the cycle completes and we become parents in our own right. Then there is man's ultimate relationship with the world around him, nature and the universe itself. In all of these we should strive to make honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, and consideration for others, the hallmark of our actions.
The way that we interact with people around us often has implications that extend far beyond what we realize. Like a pebble dropped into a still body of water, the ripples that our actions cause can result in a tsunami somewhere else.
An example of this happening in our own lives, is when our boss is delayed for a meeting because of a traffic jam on the highway. When he does arrive, he's in a bad mood and snaps at one of the employees. That employee goes home in the evening, and snaps at his wife. The wife snaps at the child, and the child takes it out on the dog. The dog, who knows nothing about the outside world, understands only that someone he loves is angry at him. He hides under the bed, where the mother finds him sometime later. She then gets angry at the child for mistreating the dog, and the cycle starts all over again and begins to build.
When Saint James wrote "the human tongue is physically small, but what tremendous effects it can boast of", he was not speaking in positive terms. He was talking about the damage that uncontrolled speech can cause. If our words have such power to hurt, then doesn't it make sense to make a practice of thinking before we speak? Once you let the words out, you can't take them back again. Before saying anything, we should always ask ourselves how it would feel to be on the receiving end of our outburst.
An untruth, even a small untruth, has the power to destroy what seemed so solid. Once the seed of doubt has been planted, it can grow into a pretty large tree. If that tree happens to be growing in your living room, it can take the roof off the top of your house when it reaches its full height. Once trust has been damaged, it is a hard thing to win back.
There is an Indian saying that runs along these lines: Once a piece of cloth is ripped, it can be repaired, or turned into something different, but it can never again be entirely whole.
Ask yourself how you would like to be remembered by the people around you when your time on this planet is over. Do you want them to remember you as someone who said what they meant and meant what they said, or as someone whose words started fires wherever they went?
What we bring into our relationships is what we get out of them. If we bring negativity, we get negativity. How we act towards others affects the quality of their lives. That we may be the cause of other peoples' suffering is something that should concern us. Just because you did not know the person you dumped coffee all over in the coffee-shop, was it right for you to not even apologize? During those two seconds that it took to happen, you had a min-relationship. So how is it that you can claim that it's all right to walk on by, because they are a stranger to you? By not making your bad day into anyone else's, you turn your small corner of the world into far, far better place.
