People will kill you overtime and how they will kill you is with tiny harmless phrases, like “be realistic”. -Dylam Moran
I read somewhere that we are the one who assigns weight of words. Like when people call us ugly, we are the one who gets to decide if it matters. But, I don't think it is as easy as that. For me, trying to ignore the negative things people say is very hard. And I find people who are carefree of such, powerful.
Words are like sharp weapons. If we are not careful with how we wield it, we could hurt others or even ourselves badly. Some people are quite nonchalant with words. Sometimes, they speak without thinking of the effect it could have on others. I remember a time, I was walking with a friend and I made a comment on his complexion. I found my comment harmless because I didn't give much thought to it. After saying that comment, he stormed off without giving a proper goodbye like he usually did. I kept thinking of what I did wrong but I couldn't place my finger on it. Then when I got home, I sent him a text to ask him what exactly I had done wrong and he told me that he didn't like the comment I made about his complexion, he was insecure about it. At first, I tried to defend myself that I was only joking and i didn't mean any harm. But, he said it hurt him. And i realized that what I thought was harmless, actually wasn't. And I apologized.
We, in fact, live in a world that places much emphasis on how someone should look - beauty standards. You can't be fat or thin, or fair or dark or whatever, the world always have something to say. And, it's 60% of the time, not good things. I read a story about a girl. When she was young, someone made a crude remark about how she looked, that she was a fat little girl. As young as she was, this remark stayed with her. She found herself eating less, learning about how many calories were in a particular meal. She stopped going out with friends, stopped satisfying her sweet tooth. All she was focused on was getting thin and fitting in with the beauty standards that her world and social media had set. And it still wasn't enough. When she got thin, people complained that she had gotten too thin, she should eat more. Like, what does the world even want?
The digital world especially, always has scathing remarks to make about how people look. The digital world enhanced the setting of beauty standards and objectification. And somehow, what most people started becoming concerned with was how they could make themselves become more like what the world wanted. Tom Hopkins, once said that “repeat anything often enough, and it will start to become you.” If people say something bad to another person, sometimes, those words stick with them. It becomes like a mantra in their brains, and somehow, it just tends to become how they see themselves. Other times, they spend almost all their lives trying to prove the world wrong. Someone named Teddy said that the often we joke to ourselves about how difficult we are to love, our heart starts to believe it.
It will be hard to put mental walls up, to deter negative stuff from coming in. Sometimes, the walls might not even be strong and we can find it fracturing under the weight of so many negative words. But what works for me, is that, in the sea of negativity, if I can get one positive comment from somebody, I make it the highlight of my day or week. I focus on that, till the next positive statement. I recite positive mantras to myself and try very hard to see myself as better than what people call me.
The world would be a much better place if we put more thoughts into what we are about to say. It would be a happier place if we said positive things to each other and made thoughtful remarks to each other.
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