Sticks and Stones and Porcelain People By Ed Chasteen
"Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." So said we all about sticks and stones and words when we were small. Before we had lived long enough to know that from sticks and stones we would recover. But from words? Never! With the weight of giant boulders the smallest word cruelly used mortally wounds our inner selves, crushing our spirit and soul. Expunging joy and spontaneity and trust. Leaving us hollow. Mannequin-like, then, we live. If only existence can be called life.
Not being smart enough ever to glimpse the relationship between those corrosive and volatile words showered upon us and their wilting effect upon our moral and ethical character, we stumble through life as quarry slaves at night, scourged to our dungeon. Having seldom heard an encouraging and loving word, we can hardly even imagine what would have been their outcome in our lives if daily bestowed upon us. No phrase seems better suited to describe such an unthinkable condition than "shock therapy."
So conditioned have we been from long years of living in a hostile verbal environment that all who would remind us we could choose to do otherwise are called dreamers, said to be naive, and not taken seriously.
We who live "in the real world" know that others are out always to show us up or put us down. By the questions they ask and the comments they make, others intend to show that they have better minds or bigger hearts. Other people always have hidden agendas which ill serve us. So long have we lived with such expectations that we come to expect such treatment from everyone. All our relationships have been poisoned by mean words so that after a while we can no longer hear loving ones.
Imagine now that you and every person you meet is a porcelain vase. Porcelain has two primary characteristics: it is beautiful and it is delicate. It breaks easily, and when it breaks, it flies to pieces.
Imagine further that every porcelain vase is filled with nitroglycerin. Nitro has two primary characteristics: it is unstable and it produces a giant explosion when upset.
Now if every person is a porcelain vase filled with nitroglycerin, we would be smart to be very careful. If we should upset one of those vases, a giant explosion would kill them. And us.
Now imagine this. Imagine that we are not imagining. We really are porcelain vases. We really are filled with nitro. An unkind word, a dirty look, a racial slur, an insult, a put-down, any of these can upset us, can trigger our nitro. And we explode!
You may be saying to yourself that I am being overly dramatic. You may be thinking that people often get upset with no deadly aftermath. That's true only in the short-run. Not all porcelain has the same breaking point. Some break the very first time. But those who don't are made more vulnerable, and when they finally blow, that first upset is as much to blame as that last one. Cumulative insults eventually produce an explosion. And it may just be the case that repeated insults increase exponentially the destructive power of that explosion.
The only safe course of action is never--not even once--to upset one of these porcelain-nitro people. Our goal in life is never to crack the porcelain and set off the nitro. But that's the negative statement of our life's ambition. Put positively, our goal is to become World Class Persons, able to go anywhere at anytime and talk to anyone about anything and feel safe. None of us is likely to fully become World Class, but any of us can move in that direction. And as we move up that road, we meet others going our way. Their stories and example will inspire and encourage us and help us go farther than we could alone.
Let us move daily toward World Class status. And as we go, we journey always with the porcelain-nitro people. Caution is always in order. So is all deliberate speed, for with our eyes on the prize, ain't nobody gonna turn us around. Our life's ambition is now to polish and protect that precious porcelain and to neutralize the nitro by creating such a benign environment that never does a flash point occur.
HateBusters
Box 442
Liberty, MO 64069
Phone: 816-803-8371
e-mail: hatebuster@aol.com
No Boundaries On Our Soul!
