Words Are Real and They Do Real Things

You have had a sentence said to you that you still remember. Somebody said it once, maybe did not even mean it much, and you have carried it for years.

That is not because you are too sensitive. That is because words are real and they do real things and everybody has always known this.

Which means the ones you say are real too.

You are carrying something that can open a person up or shut them down, and you use it about a thousand times a day.

I write for a living, so I have thought about this more than most people. And here is the thing I would want somebody to have told me when I was young. Being right is not the same as being useful. I have watched people say a completely true thing at completely the wrong moment and do more damage than a lie would have done.

Knowing what to say is one skill. Knowing when is a different one, and it is rarer, and almost nobody teaches it.

You are already armed. You have been since you learned to talk. The question was never whether you had a weapon.