Slow Your Roll With That Pen Pardner

They say the pen is mightier than the sword and I truly believe that. But in looking at a pen, it does seem so innocently innocuous, especially when compared to the razor sharp edge of a sword, or worse, a double edged sword. My husband, a retired Marine, is into military history and its weaponry. Let's just say there are some pretty scary looking swords and daggers in existence.

Oddly enough, I actually own several of each. Some are dull props but others are very real and dangerous. Accordingly, I handle them with extreme caution and keep them put up where they can't be misused.

Those type weapons, along with their shooting cousins, guns, are readily recognized as dangerous, requiring proper handling, and carry a great responsibility with their ownership and use. If only we saw our words, pens, and keyboards with the same potential for injury and utilized the same care and responsibility when using them.

The Weaponization of Words

We've all seen them -- those rants where someone goes off about an issue, an individual, or a group of individuals. It is very easy to get caught up in the emotion of the moment and forget that there are living, breathing, people with feelings attached to our rant. They get wounded. And how very cruel to attack in a most impersonal way by throwing them on a public skyline and stabbing them with an angry torrent of words. And writing with anonymity doesn't necessarily help, because there is always someone that knows, or thinks they know, and off go the whispers. We certainly don't win popularity contests when we do that. We very likely generate seething enemies that will now thwart us at every turn no matter what they genuinely believe, because a personal vendetta has now been generated due to the uncarefully crafted rant campaign.

Persuade, Not Wound

My preferred method of dealing with people and issues has always been the art of persuasion, presenting a heartfelt, reasoned argument or plea for a particular stance on an issue and genuinely listening and trying to understand the opposing side. It is always best done without attacking the other side because once you wound or alienate people, flip their bitch switch if you will, you've lost them. I don't see many articles like that these days. Everything I read feels like it is an assault against someone else or against something that is supported by a body of people. Many times there are literally derogatory and insulting statements. How does that bring people together? How does that generate the one big happy world that we all say we want -- and yet, if we look at our behaviors and be open and honest about them, our actions and writings belie our happy world sentiment.

Self Reflection for Inconsistencies

So, as I sit in contemplation looking over the past days, weeks and months of my life, I am grading myself on how well have I done in being my authentic self and living in harmony with my beliefs. How much duality (aka hypocrisy) have I allowed to creep into my life? How much "do as I say, not as I do" am I living?

More than I care to expose here when I'm being totally honest. So, I won't hang my dirty laundry out here to flap in the wind, but I will commit to making changes. It may take a lot of little changes to add up to the big overhaul, and it might take months instead of minutes, hours or days. But, the most important part is that we stay vigilante and that we make genuine effort to police ourselves and correct our course when we veer off track.

And most important of all, we need to realize that words can and do wound, and therefore should be used with the same care and responsibility as any other weapon. The world is already too full of destruction and cruelty. We should strive to elevate, not decimate.

~~~~~

I wrote this article because I feel it is important to remember that our words can be a double edged sword. They can uplift others, or tear them down. Being a writer is a HUGE responsibility in my humble opinion. Even activists should take care. Two quotes by Ruth Bader Ginsburg come to mind:

"I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others."

and

"Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."