The Power of Words
In one of Jerry Seinfeld’s stand ups, he jokes about the intensity of boredom as a kid and how adults exhibit superpower strength every day just by demonstrating the ability to stand up straight when experiencing boredom. Being bored would literally make his body slump until he eventually wound up flat on the ground in the middle of the wallpaper store with his mom.
I thought of 9-year-old Jerry in the wallpaper store as I walked through the airport the other day, weighted with sadness after a family weekend went awry. Each step I took required a reminder to actually keep my chin up, my eyes forward. My mother’s words played on repeat in my head: “It must be hard to be in a relationship with you.” Sting. “Sometimes there’s such a thing as too much therapy.” Sear. “You’re a smartass is what you are.” Shatter. Replaying these moments threatened to bring me to my knees on the airport conveyor belt that carried me down the Dallas terminal on my layover. Her words branded my heart with raging heat, the tone and intensity of her delivery just adding additional venom to my bloodstream.
In a book I read recently, This Particular Happiness, the author describes a similar scenario where her mother made a comment to her about her choice to not have children. Words that stuck to her ribs for decades. When she mentioned it to her mom many years later, she had no recollection of saying them.
How many of us are walking through life letting someone else’s words define us? As I neared my gate, I watched the hundreds of people around me, now covered by masks and face shields, and wondered how many were using every strand of effort to stay standing up. How many had their own branded hearts? How many were walking around with emotional bruises that have turned the ugliest of colors? How do billions of people bear the weight of heartache, sadness, loneliness, and a slew of other emotions on the daily? My God are we all brave. My God do we all deserve medals of accomplishment. My God do we all deserve the right to melt into a puddle at any given moment in any public place without cause for concern or judgment. Can you imagine it? Seeing your co-worker walking to the office kitchen to grab their lunch and suddenly taking a slow motion bow to the earth. Heartache. Or a patron in the grocery store sitting against the pasta sauce shelves mid-decision. Sadness. Or the person at a green light who is blinking back tears. Loneliness. I know these people well. I’ve been physically standing behind my grocery cart but mentally taking a rest on the floor. I’ve been dutifully working behind my computer but mentally allowing my forehead to rest on my desk. I’ve been taking all of the right turns on my way home but mentally in a trance. I’ve been walking through the airport but mentally missing my flight, stuck on the conveyor belt that doesn’t seem to end. Because that’s how sadness strikes. Without notice. Without even a knock on the door. Without a contract that states how long it will be there.
The Buddha says that words have the power to either destroy or heal. While I knew it wasn’t my mother’s intention to destroy, I still sat in devastation, climbing over my tears, reprimanding myself for allowing them to exist. In yoga we learn how to respond rather than react. How to notice, reflect, and then decide. Any time conflict arises in my life, there’s a moment where time seems to stand still. I have a memory from my childhood. We were driving down the vacant dirt road that led to our cabin in northern Michigan. A pitch black sky. The sound of slow tires on gravel. And a sudden flash of reflective eyes. An actual deer in headlights. If you’ve ever seen one, they have that moment too. They take a second to respond. To decide if they’ll keep freezing or flee into the wild. I talk about it often in challenging yoga poses, like Warrior 2 or Plank. And I often say, as many other yoga teachers have, that the real yoga begins the moment you feel like getting out of the pose. The moment discomfort starts to sound the alarms. Get out of here! It’s not safe! Screw Plank pose! But when we learn to be comfortable in the uncomfortable, when we decide to stay instead of flee, that’s where the door to growth opens up. Staying in the tough moments teach resilience, self-respect, discipline, and compassion. They show our humanness.
I stepped away from the weekend that went awry thinking of Buddha’s words and the words of Pema Chodron. She says: “Every word we speak and every action we perform affects our future.” Our words are so powerful. Not just the ones we use on one another, but the ones that are also floating through our heads. I know my humanness will show through at varying times of my life, heck, it shows up every single day of my life. I will continuously stumble, not use the most impactful words, or the kindest, both to myself and others. But I also know that I vow to show up authentically, I vow to be honest with myself and others. To take a pause and decide how I will respond. I will exercise my right to speak and I will notice when others are having a hard time standing upright. Because it takes daily effort, constant bravery, and major courage to just get out of bed some days. Let’s be gentler. Let’s be kinder. Let’s use our words to heal.
