Have u ever thought of the influence your words have? Try to imagine, you were chatting with your friend about something you’ve never heard before. It becomes an information stuck to your head. And the next time u met someone else and happen to be talking about the same topic u used to talk about with ur friend, you’ll be able to say, “well, my friend told me before that blah blah blah blah… and that blah blah blah... really! ya la, very blah blah blah blah right?” Lol...
It happens many times, to everybody! Information is passed on all the time! But does it ever occur to you how your say can be so much widespread? When we talk, we are not fully aware of the fact that the information we’re giving will be used by that particular person we’re speaking to, when he/she had a conversation about the same topic with other ppl. Well, of course not all of our words! But this should be something to warn all of us why we shouldn’t be sloppy with our words.
Now, before I continue, I’m NOT talking about anyone in particular! I’m writing about what just popped out in my head. So if you feel guilty, please read on and maybe you can find the remedy somewhere… no promises though. =P
Anw. To make it more clear, I’ll give u an example of my conversation earlier on today.
I was talking to my friend and she didn’t really know about the condition in Indonesia. How bad the corruption is. So I told her the story that my mom shared to me about this guy that shared with her that he has to PAY CASH to actually get into a police force in Bali. No need loyalty n passion, no need training, no need oath or whatsoever, pay money can get uniform, badge and a rank already. The more you pay the higher rank you’ll get la!
Now, lets say the person that talked to my mom lied. What would happen? My mom will one way or another, told a lie! Even if she doesn’t know it. Am I right? Then, what happened? I would be telling a lie also and my friend that I talked to would be telling lies to the next person she talked to about this! Hahaha… it’s a vicious cycle and the worse thing is, we don’t even know it! XD
That’s why actually we don’t even realize how MUCH grace we need. For all the lies we tell without even knowing that it’s a lie. ;)
God is so good.
But I know my mom would always carefully pick what she told me. She wont give me any information anybody gives like that. Only if she finds it trustworthy, she’ll tell me. But it may be exaggerated? Some of the details, maybe like the amount to be paid in the story can be magnified? Digits are easily distorted in a story as it goes by. By nature we just love telling stories with bigger numbers in it. =)
“He’s a million miles away!” (well, anything on earth can’t be more than 12.600 km apart)
“He gave me tons of bread!” (even if he had a bread factory, that’s pretty a lot u know…)
“Billions and billions of dollars!” (wow… I don’t mind having those)
“It’s been ages!” (it’s not even an AMOUNT for crying out loud)
Anything can happen along the way as a story is told.
Hahaha, I don’t want you guys to be judgmental after reading this, about the stories you heard or read, you can decide for yourself which one to receive and which one is better off not heard at all. but I’m just writing this to make all of us realize that, our words DO carry power. Lol, actually all of us that has a Bible no need to look so far. It’s written already that the words that we speak frames our world (Heb 11:3) and so many more that talks about the power of our words. But this is just a small example I’m providing u guys to think about. And maybe all of us can be more careful with our words, yea? =)
This leads me to the second thing I wanna share, about response. We live in a time whereby people want answers to be given right away. Now now now. Which sometimes caused a person to answer in a very shallow, imprecise way, because he/she was not given the time to really think about what he’s going to answer. Well, I don’t really care about cliché questions “like how are you?” we can always say “fine” no matter what hell we went thru that day. Or when someone asked “what are you doing now?” we can simply say “nothing” when actually only dead people does nothing.
But lets say, about something that can really affect our thinking or our future?
I’ll give my own experience again as an example.
I asked my mom once something about God and how He does things. It was kind of a complicated question but I’m sure my mom would have an answer to it. To my surprise she said, “Well, I’m not sure son, I’ll find out and I’ll let you know.” But afterwards she explained to me and said, “you know why I don’t want to answer straight away. I’d rather choose to make you wait for an answer and allow myself to really seek the correct, precise answer rather than giving you stupidity.” She doesn’t care about her image of not being able to answer on the spot, coz people have this thinking that you’re good only when you can straight away answer something – but she knew that it’s best to provide the correct answer rather than looking “good” in front of me.
The next day when she got the answer to it, she gave me something I’ve never knew and it went beyond my expectation! There’s power in seeking for the right answer, not the answer that you think is right at that moment when someone asked you something, especially when you’re counseling or guiding someone. I have to confess that I talk a lot of crap to what I think is unimportant, but I do talk seriously when it comes to these kind of questions. But still, sometimes I didn’t really take my time and answer on the spot even if I’m not 100% sure. And the result was, when I finished talking and hung the phone, the things that I know I should’ve said just came to me and it made me feel like calling the person again and re-do everything! Coz it’s much more powerful when you’re willing to take time to answer! =)
Now now, don’t go and say, “we’ll I’m not really sure… can you give me a moment to think about the answer? Maybe I’ll call you back tomorrow!” when someone is asking you whether he should just jump down from the window he’s standing on right now or not. X)
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