Words can break; words can heal too. When we write work emails to bosses or the people we supervise or to clients or any other business associate, we choose our words wisely, write and rewrite responses before hitting the send button and sign off with kind regards, among others. All of this is to make sure that the words are not used against us or used to sabotage an important work or business relationship. Then there is the legal part: carefully crafted, ambiguous, politically correct phrases. We do a good job at minding our words. A round of applause for us all.
And then when it comes to family and close friends, the people who matter the most, we do not observe any kind of protocol. All the emotional sensitivity jumps out the window and leaves us with a big hole in the face that just lets out all manner of words in the name of being honest and saying it as it is. We call it being real, but really, it is being stupid and out of control.
The problem with this is that those words cut so deep; they are hard to forgive, let alone. Fifty years later, the recipient of your emotional outburst will still remember what you said and how those words made them feel.
Just so we are clear, suppressing one’s emotions or how you feel about something is equally destructive. That is why it is important to have a preplanned venting system.
Start with Google. Ask something along the lines of, ‘How to have a sensitive conversation without being silly or how to express anger and annoyance and frustration without breaking up a friendship. How to write an angry email without making things worse or looking like an angry black human. How to vent without stinking up the room, among otyhers.’
Read them now before conflict shows up because when you are angry, there is no time to first Google. We do it for total strangers who are only related to us by money, but not those who we say we love or care about.
Last Sunday, flipping through various channels to see which church I was going to be a first-time remote visitor at, I came across Makerere Full Gospel Church on the telly. They were having what they called, the marrieds Sunday. So, I thought to myself, I will just stay for the worship session then find another channel/ church for a sermon. I figured they were going to talk about married people problems, and I cannot relate, so yeah.
But somehow even after the music, I stayed on. The preacher of the day, Ms Tasha Mukuye, intrigued me. She told a story about how when she was pregnant with her first child, she suffered Hyperemesis gravidarum. In other words, it was a difficult nine months.
She says that one day, her husband took her for an antenatal care appointment but had to leave for a business meeting at one of the hotels in town while she stayed in the hospital and finished up. Read that as needles, tabs, and all those hospital visit things that make an already irritable pregnant woman angry.
Husband gets to the hotel; there is nice food, so he sends pregnant wife a message to tell her about the nice food.
Pregnant wife explodes and writes an angry response about how she is here suffering, and he is there talking about food.
Husband responds, saying if he could, he would take her place and carry what she was carrying just so she would not have to go through it all.
Angry wife reads the message, and the anger dissipates at 190 km per hour. She cannot even remember why she was angry in the first place. Imagine with me for a second what could have happened if husband had gotten angry, and understandably so, and shot back with his version of crazy?
Words! They can break or heal. Again, please note that this does not mean you should die in silence. You will end up dying for real, not to mention the chronic constipation that comes with it. So, speak up.
But way before conflict is born and starts crawling around your backyard, purpose that you will use your words to communicate properly and effectively, not to bleed on people and then sever relationships with blunt words that cut like a blunt knife.
That woman who killed some of her children last week and wounded others because of a sour relationship with hubby; I am pretty sure that negative words were on the board of directors of that conflict.
So, first go shout at a tree before you talk to your actual audience.