If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say…
We’ve all heard that saying. Somehow it’s always someone’s grandmother who said it, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Well, if that were the case for most of us, it’d be a very quiet world we’d be living in, indeed.
The words we use are potent. The average person says about 16,000 words throughout the day. That’s a pile of expressions just waiting to be misused, misconstrued, misunderstood, unintentional etc. It’s also a sizable mound of potentially happy, positive, enjoyable, understandable, sincere, truthful words that might make up a random day. Tell me, out of 16,000 of the words you say every day, how many do you think offer expressions or feelings that fall into the latter category? 8,000? 12,000? 15,997? 1?
Alright, I know, you can’t just be black and white about it. Every word you say has an effect that is both good and bad, and probably also indifferent most of the time. Like, “excuse me, do you have the time?” Fair enough. But, when we’re talking to people we talk to on a regular basis, like our wives, or our children or our parents, those piles of words, they’re like emotional landfills. It’d be manageable if it were 16,000 words. But after 20 years of knowing someone intimately , you probably share something on the order of about 16,000,000 words between one another. To give you a sense of how many words that is – that’s about 200 average length novels. Man, if you read one of those 200 and it sucked, and you knew you had to read 199 more by the same author…oy vey. Imagine a huge bookshelf full of books written by you. Now imagine that your child must read them all. Does that make it seem more serious? Why do people so often speak negatively to one another without concern for the consequences – to the ones they love no less?
Don’t tell me you don’t see it that much, because it’s all too present. At this very moment about 100,000 mothers are screaming obscenities at their barely-able-to-communicate 3 year olds in Macy’s. Teenagers, right now, are on a subway car using slang that makes many of us ashamed to live in the same city. News anchors, at this very moment, are spreading horrific fear about alleged crimes to every corner of the globe. Right now, a fake-rich rapper is one-upping another fake-rich-steroid-muscle-having rapper. Crappy rock bands are rehearsing an angst-ridden, pathetic set in their studio, right now — all with no regard for the rest of us.
What is this addiction so many of us have to filling our words with such terrible connotation? Why are we so frequently drawn to scary pictures, tales of misery, competition with one another, four-letter word slinging comics with no talent, etc. We keep demanding this lifestyle of negativity from the media and often perpetuate it in our homes . Folks, this is the wrong path to becoming better people. We need to quit pooping all over each other. You know what happens when we all poop all over each other? We ALL stink.
It seems to me, a lot of us choose to be numbed by it rather than fix it or at least addressing its existence. So many non-thinking moments we would rather remain aloof than attempt to make what we say to others more positive and meaningful. Words are powerful. We share so many of them. Why don’t we all try to be a bit more thoughtful when it comes to our word choices, our tone, our vocabulary, our delivery, or rhythm even. Because when you talk like an ignorant, combative jerk, statistically, you come off like an ignorant, combative jerk about 15,997 times a day. 
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