Words sample essay
We all know the saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me,” which we learned back in childhood. The saying suggests that only what people do can harm others, words cannot. This is so untrue. Words do not come from nowhere and do not disappear - they reflect thoughts of ones and affect the others. Human personality gets formed and changed under the influence of our environment – people, whom we respect, whose opinion counts for us and whom we care about. Words are the verbal means of communication among people, thus they are ones of the ways to affect each other. Consequently, words have great power over people.
Words can inspire, encourage, support, or they can break one’s spirits and heart, discourage, disappoint, ruin self-esteem and belief. Words have an exceptional meaning for children, especially when they come from someone they love, respect and look up to. Harsh and offensive words said by parents can harm their child much worse that any stick or stone.
Of course actions in most cases have even stronger demonstrative abilities. However, we should not forget that people still tend to believe words both consciously and subconsciously. There is another saying that word is not a bird - if you let it out, you will not get it back. This means that no matter how many times you apologize for what you said, the person will still know that there was a time when you meant what you said. Apology can be accepted, and words can seemingly be forgotten, but subconsciously they will still influence your relations and psychology of that person.
Psychologists constantly pay parents’ and teachers’ attention to the meaning of words. Children become who they are from the way parents treat them. The latter often use some words, which they think help to discipline and teach children, whereas in reality the words hurt, diminish self-esteem, cause jealousy, lies, cruelty, etc. All of the feelings will further in life cause a lot of problems and pain. Words said once can return in many ways and influence person’s life till the end of the days.
Words can cause family split, which obviously is painful. If parents always say to their son that they wished he was more like his sister, the boy will be jealous, which is no good both for relations in the family and for the boy’s personality. He will always know that parents love his sister more, which will cause him pain directly from knowing it, and indirectly through something he will do out of jealousy.
There is nobody who possesses a greater inspiring or destructive power over a child than parents do. If they call their child a jerk or a crybaby, the child will grow up with these labels, which will destruct his/her personality, self-esteem, will cause problems in communication and self expression. Such labels may prevent revealing natural talents and abilities. This is something that will harm the whole life.
So far we spoke about parents that love their child but do not realize how much their words hurt the child. The case gets even worse if it is a really problematic family, where a child gets regularly and heavily verbally abused. Can anyone doubt that hearing “I wish you were never born” from your own mother may not hurt? Hearing nothing but cursing from parents is exactly the thing that leads many children to drugs, alcohol, and cruelty over weaker ones.
Words can hurt and harm not only children. When somebody you love and intend to spend all your life with, tells you “I don’t love you any more, let’s break up,” the whole your world turns upside down. When words ruin something very important for you, you feel pain even physically and experience such a terrible emotional breakdown that you’d rather cease to exist. Words can break somebody’s dream, somebody’s hope and belief. There are times when people do miracles, beat all the records, win the first prizes, make brilliant inventions, do something apparently impossible only because they believe that somebody needs and appreciates it. Saying such a person that s/he is a looser, nobody needs what s/he does and nobody loves him/her can put an end to the desire of creating something, pushing forward, it can ruin person’s spirits and will for doing something.
Truly words possess enormous power over people. They express our thoughts and feelings, while we all care what our close people think about us. Even if we reject that words hurt us, we still cannot get rid of them sitting in our mind. Pain experienced from the words is even worse than pain from a physical injury, because it has greater consequences. Emotional pain and offence stays in your mind, harms your further relations with the person and changes your personality, usually for the worse. Verbal offense often pushes you towards wrong actions and decisions.
Bibliography
Schaefer, C. E. “Words that Hurt.” FamilyFun.com. Available:
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