Gulf Shores AL
Author of "Practical Parenting: An Un-Politically Correct Guide from the Trenches"
Playwright Tom Stoppard said, “Words are sacred.
They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can
nudge the world a little.”
I am old enough to be amazed by social media, with its
multitude of words and pictures. It did not exist when I was new. If we wanted
enlightenment, we went to the library or read the Post. By the time we found
our information, the events were already in the past. We knew people
of different cultures existed, and events happened, but it was knowledge that
came at a distance, blurred by its time-consuming transformation into
letters and pictures.
When we curious children wanted to
see what a woman looked like without her clothes, we stole our
parent’s National Geographic and leafed through it for pictures of deepest
Africa. Kennedy and Lennon were shot, but there were no cell phone
videos or instant interviews. The stories unfolded over weeks, with time
to adjust and get a little distance.
Social media now comes with immediacy and savage
intensity. People’s lives are flayed open and placed on the screen for my
perusal. If I presume to know anything about that woman in Africa, she can
knock me upside the head minutes later, because she is in reality just a
hairsbreadth away. If I pretend to wisdom, the whole world can judge me and let
me know where they think are my errors in judgment.
This brilliant transparency should make us more
authentic, more determined to write nothing that we would not stand behind
to our deaths. We should claim our words without reservation. These
words. are. me. Sadly,
from a place of weakness and fear it can instead make us deny
what we know, as we buffer our truth so as not to be responsible for it.
We write, “Tweets do not replace medical
advice; retweets are not to be considered an endorsement.” We backtrack and pad
ourselves against risk. The most powerful thing we can do – put out
thoughts into words for other people to see – we disclaim and weaken with
“tweets are not meant to be advice.”
Of course they are! What would be the point, otherwise?
If we give thought to and write words down, then they
need to be true. Words are sacred. We record our words in the hopes that they
will “nudge the world a little.” If our words are our truth, then they
have earned our faith: we have to stand behind them with our names and our
identities.
Weakening our words by buying into a fear of lawsuits and
judgment is a betrayal of our selves; it costs us a piece of our souls. Our
words are us, and denying them, even in a small part, allows decay to eat
away at our own value.
Conversely, since we wrote those words with our very own
minds and hands, we should never, in the rush to say something, write down what we know is not
truth: those words will also follow us through our lives. People sometimes feel
that they can be nasty, petty, or judgmental on the internet because they are
anonymous. They can twist the facts just a little to make their point. We must
realize that there is no such thing as true anonymity. Even if no one else ever
knows who wrote those words, you yourself do.
Persian poet Hafez wrote, “The words you speak become the
house you live in.” Write only words that have a strong foundation and the
solidity of truth, so that your house is yours alone and can hold up the hurricane force winds of opinion.
Hafez’s words are as true on the internet today as they were in the
fourteenth century in ink on paper. Such is the power of words. Believe in them
and in your self.
