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Thursday 14 June 2018

Before You Open Your Mouth


Wow, just like that!

That was me exclaiming to myself as I watched Candace and Michael - characters in the movie 'Think Like Man Too' - exchange vows to become husband and wife.

Let me add here that I have seen the movie like 50 times, it just never gets old for me.

All they had to say was 'I do' and voila, they are bound together for the rest of their lives.

As the movie ended, I thought about the fact that their lives had changed not because their families were present, not because of the clothes they had on or even the rings exchanged, it was the words 'I Do', those two simple words that changed everything forever.

This shows how powerful words are.

Little wonder the Bible says in the book of Proverbs that we are ensnared by the words of our mouths. It's as we say in Pidgin 'if you no take care your mouth fit put you for trouble'.

We read stories of people who have been sentenced to death and all it took to seal their fate were the words of a Judge.

There are lives that are broken today because a someone they trusted said something hurtful or couldn't keep their words.

Just recently, precisely in April the President while giving a speech at a business meeting during the Commonwealth Assembly in London, noted that 60% of the Nigerian population are young people, majority of whom are uneducated and waiting to be given everything for free.

He had implied that Nigerian youths are lazy.

This demoralizing statement was met with harsh criticisms and even birthed the hash tag #lazynigerianyouths in defense of the spirit of the Nigerian youth who toils and pushes hard against the odds.

The President while visiting Morocco just this past Monday stated that Nigerians are the most 'intellectually aggressive and economically ambitious' people in the world. It's safe to say he had learned to use positive words.

This tells you the power of words.

I read a story shared on Twitter yesterday.

A young girl wrote about how an older woman constantly called her beautiful and would go ahead to say 'please tell me you believe you are beautiful' and she would go on to say that she believed.

She recently asked the woman why she always said that and the response she got 'shattered' her - in her words.

The older woman's teenage daughter had committed suicide because she was constantly bullied in school and called ugly for being black. This made the woman decide that she would constantly make every young girl she meets know she is beautiful regardless of her skin colour.

She understood how careless words can hurt and even end a life because she had been a victim.

I could go on to share stories about the power of our words but the truth is that our words have power. 

We can create the life we want with our words, we can call out the good in a person with our words, we can start or end battles with our words and can end a life with our words.

Life is challenging and the last thing you want is for the people you love to feel worse because of the words you said. You may apologize for words spoken in anger but an irreparable damage might have been done.

So before you open your mouth to speak think about the consequences of your words because words when spoken can never be taken back.

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