Lack of Words Create Worlds

I've heard the phrase "Words Create Worlds" the last few days.  It refers to the rhetoric we are all seeing in our news feeds.  

The anger and outrage by our friends that creates ugly conversations in the comments.  Words that divide instead of unify.  

But I'd also like to say that a lack of words also creates worlds.  This works in the political and cultural spectrum, but I'd like to go a different direction with it.  It applies even more in our personal lives.  When we fail to speak words to a friend who is hurting, we are adding another building block to our world. A world we would never intentionally live in.

We've all been there.  A friend has something bad happen to them--an illness, a death of a family memory, a marriage falling apart, the loss of a job.  Truly hard things that sneak up on us and frankly, scare us.  We often don't know what to say because we don't want to say the wrong thing.  We've heard the horror stories of someone walking up to a mom at the funeral of her daughter and saying, "I know how you feel.  I lost my dog last week."  

So, in order to not say something that will hurt, we keep silent.  And the silence is just as hurtful.  

I've had a few hard losses in my life--my birth father, my mom, the deaths of my dad and grandparents, my job--and those are just the big ones.  But the hardest losses I've felt are the losses of my friends when those awful things happen.  My friends who don't reach out.  My friends who stay silent.  My friends who occasionally like a post but never write a word.  

Those are the most hurtful and hardest for me to grasp.

And I get it.  I have been at a loss for words on many occasions (don't faint--I CAN be quiet...sometimes). I have let the fear of saying the wrong thing cause me to say nothing.  But I have also regretted it.

And the nothing can be even harder on the person who is feeling the loss.  I can't speak for you, but I know it has been for me.   

So, maybe it's been a long time.  Maybe you don't say anything now because you are fearful that it has been TOO long and won't be received well.  

Say it anyway.  

Reach out.  Maybe you start with an apology.  Maybe you start with a joke.  Maybe you just start with "I love you."  I don't think the words choose even really matter.  

But the fact that you chose to speak DOES matter.  No matter how long it's been.