On the heels of my last post, “Shut up and Listen”, I had the chance to rehearse one of the other aspects of communication – the actual speaking part. Not just in a normal, everyday situation, but in dealing with an issue. Without getting into the issue, here are some thing I was reminded of in a less than pleasant manner.
There are times that we have listened and think we are ready to speak. So, we speak. Then we come back later to realize that the words we spoke have caused harm. Perhaps directly, perhaps indirectly – having been repeated at an inopportune time or to the wrong audience. A little story to bring us around to my point:
As my lovely Wife will attest, I am full of little sayings, stories and anecdotes. Many of which originated from my grandmother. As a child, I recall listening to my grandmother telling a story of a man who had spoke inappropriately about a number of people, and wanted to make the situation right. He went to a wise man to ask how to correct his mistake, and the wise man tells him to take a small feather and place it on the doorstep of each person he had spoken against, and come back. So the man does as instructed, carefully placing a feather on each doorstep, and returns to the wise man. “Now”, instructs the wise man, “Go and collect those feathers.” The man returns to the doorsteps of his verbal victims only to find that the feathers are not to be found. Sadly, he returns to the wise man and reports his findings. “Such is the way of our words”, replies the wise man. “Once spoken, we know not where they will go. So, choose them wisely.”
A word spoken out of turn can cause much chaos, mayhem and disorder. It may be true, it may seem like the best answer at the time and it may seem innocuous to us, but if we haven’t considered the listeners point of view, we may be causing harm. Or, what if our words are repeated in the hearing of others? There are many scenarios that we could ponder, but we won’t. Here is my hard earned wisdom for the week: Not everything that we have on our minds needs to be shared. Sometimes the better part of communication is to remain speechless.
