The Power of Words

By Caitlin Rafferty

As children, sayings like “sticks & stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” were forced upon us. Whether it was a parent, teacher or classmate who said it, it quickly became a mindset for a lot of kids. One could argue the saying is to remind people they should never let someone else’s words hurt them. But does the saying make children oblivious to the power of the tongue?

A sentence could absolutely wreck someone’s confidence in themselves, but so could a single word.

Your words can be a dangerous thing. When talking to someone or about something, you actually hold the power to change perspectives, attitudes & honestly, lives.

When you speak to someone, is what you say leaving a positive impact or a damaging effect?

Do you choose to uplift people or bring them down with your words?

Disagreements happen, people say things in the heat of the moment. However, the things you say in anger don’t appear from nowhere. There is a source. As a society, if your mind automatically goes to lashing out with words to upset someone else when things go south for you, let us not normalise that. Let us not use being irascible as an excuse for what you say. In all honesty, being angry is hardly proper justification to be rude, it is at best an explanation.

Perhaps the bigger question is not only what you say, but why you say it.

When you know exactly what will hurt someone and choose to say it anyway, your intention matters. There is a difference between speaking without thinking and deliberately finding someone’s weak spot. We all have moments where our emotions get the better of us, but that does not mean we should become comfortable with using our words as weapons.

It is easy to forget that the person on the receiving end does not know what you meant unless you show them. You might consider something a joke, a harmless comment or something you said in the moment, but that does not automatically determine how it will be received. Sometimes the words we throw around so casually carry far more weight than we realise.

Perhaps that is where the responsibility lies. Not in never saying the wrong thing, because none of us are perfect, but in being conscious of what we put into the world. Think before you speak. Think about the person you are speaking to. Most importantly, think about your intention.

Are you speaking because you have something worth saying, or because you know your words will get a reaction?

Our words can be used to embarrass, belittle and tear people down, but they can also be used to encourage, reassure and remind someone of their worth. The choice is ours.

So maybe “sticks & stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” was not the lesson we should have carried with us from childhood.

Maybe we should have learnt something different like words have power, and with that power comes responsibility.