When I was 20 something and
living in Ljubljana, I got into a dispute with my landlady. In the heat of the
moment I must have said some really mean stuff to her, because what she said
then in a very calm and soothing voice still echoes in my mind. “You’ll see,
that tongue of yours will hit you in your life!” I did not know what she
meant then so I simply grinned at her disbelievingly.
When I was a kid, I had a similar experience. I
remember it was Sunday. I know that, because Sundays were the only days that
the whole family sat down and had a family Sunday lunch together. We had the
traditional meat soup, followed by mashed potatoes and cooked meat from soup -
a true peasant’s lunch. Somehow I got upset with my mom and again in the heat
of the moment I called her “a goat” (in Slovenian language that is quite an insult).
She just looked at me and said: “You know, if you hit me, the pain will go
away, but words, they stay. You can never take them back!” One would’ve
thought, I’d learned back then. Obviously I had not. It is easy to lose the
perspective, when one is overwhelmed with emotion.
The pain we feel after the words have been said come
from regret that we hurt people we love the most. Remorse is then futile. One
cannot take words back. No matter how un-meant they were, no matter how un-true
they were, no matter how un-anything they were. Any explanation looks like a
cheap excuse. No “I am sorry” can ctrl+Z it. Words were thought, said and
received. They were then taken, interpreted and became a catalyst of physical manifestation
called emotion. Sure, my mom has forgiven me; sure my landlady did so, too. Or
maybe she simply forgot that awful boy that caused her pain. No matter how
justified those words seemed to me at that moment, in the aftermath I felt
terrible. I felt ashamed and I felt sad that people, who allowed me to be even
a smallest part of their life, were hurt only because I was angry,
dissatisfied, unfulfilled and childish.
That got me thinking. It is not the words that we say
that are the problem. The problem seems to be rooted in a previous state of the
conversation. Once emotions overflow us barriers are already lifted and the tsunami
like wave of destruction has been released. In order not to succumb to it, one
has to listen first. One needs to keep the calm inside and listen. That is how I
learnt the importance of being silent. Let me explain.
