Mindfulness: The Power of Words

To Heal or Hurt ... it's all in your hands... oops ... 'your words'

 

It’s been a few days now, since a colleague remarked ‘You, should mind the tone of your voice ...’ or words to that effect! Despite my rebuttal, ‘it could be mutual’ and a quick private word with her, immediately after the incident - we ‘assured’ each other ‘no offence meant and none taken’ ... but I must admit long after that, her ‘words’ still had me in knots!

It was not hard to imagine the multiple ways that such a situation could ‘degenerate’ into, I came up with the following: ‘Ok, you’ve had your say, I’ll get back with you...’, ‘Seethe with anger’, ‘Feel insulted/slighted’ ...

I also realized the reactions to such situations significantly differ according to contexts - when ‘played out before an audience’ and when ‘sans an audience’.

What, if any, is the learning from such ‘sensitive situations’, it is not as if such ‘situations’ will not arise in the future, and most particularly, keeping in mind the dangers of such situations ‘degenerating’, and the potential to set off a vicious ‘eye for an eye’ cycle.

 ‘You, should mind the tone of your voice...’ the implied ‘imperative’ and the ‘modal’ ... could connote tones and meanings quite unintended by the speaker, but acknowledging the ‘dangerous possibilities’ ... here’s an attempt to ‘rephrase’ the same ‘accusatory phrase’!

‘You know ... your tone comes across to me ... as....’ or ‘When I hear the tone of your voice ... I feel ...’, or ‘I am not quite sure, how I feel, hearing the tone of your voice ...’ And all of a sudden, such a proactive, ‘I’ squarely places and accepts the responsibility for what ‘I’ am hearing and ‘my attempts to describe my feelings’ and removes the ‘sting’ of the ‘accusatory’, ‘you’ and ‘should ...’ ‘The Power of Words’ to ‘hurt or heal’ … have immense implications! 

Not quite sure, whether it was Mohandas Gandhi? or Louis Fischer? or Henry Powell Spring? or Martin Luther King? who famously remarked, ‘An Eye for an Eye Will Make the Whole World Blind’ – I, for one certainly do not fancy a ‘blind world’ given the ‘tools’ at our disposal to ‘see better’!