Richard Enos
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” As a child, this well-worn phrase was the perfect antidote to whatever insulting name-calling I had to endure from other children. Those times I did remember to use it, it seemed to give me back some strength and made me feel good. For all of us, the perspective behind this phrase can turn an ‘insult’ into what it truly is: mere words, a string of vocal utterances without innate meaning or power, unless the recipient were to interpret them as such by taking them personally.
The very phrase ‘She insulted me,’ is at best a relative and not an absolute truth. More accurate would be the phrase ‘She said something and I took it personally,’ because these two things are always required for someone to be insulted. It is not a matter of whether or not she intended to demean, offend, or humiliate me; if indeed she did, though, the truth about it is simply that ‘She said this with an intention to insult me.’ In the end, this never proves the insult to be true; it just proves that she is a person who tries to insult others.
If personal frailty makes us take offending statements personally–and many of us still fall into that category, at least some of the time–the experience always provides an opportunity for us to come to grips with how we feel about ourselves, and continue to do the personal work required that renders us invulnerable to insult. From this more powerful place, we can then deal with those who would insult or demean us in a much more effective manner.
Understand that I am not advocating that we individually or collectively suffer in silence when hateful and prejudicial speech is directed at us; I am suggesting that if we have allowed ourselves to be emotionally impacted by such speech, and have given these words power over us, we are unlikely to be able to deal with the situation in an effective manner.
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