All the Small Things

Small Things:

Over the years I’ve been consistently amazed – as well as pleasantly surprised - by the small things that we all remember others saying or telling us, sometimes in passing, other times as parts of much longer discourses. 

As a treatment/therapist/advice worker clients would often approach me days, weeks, months, and even years after conversations with a variation on the theme “I remembered what we talked about” or “I’ve been thinking about what you said” before going on to tell me how this had caused them to think about things in a different way or to do something differently.  And I’ve been the same.  I can think of three occasions off the top of my head – one from ten years ago – in which fractions of conversations have positively influenced what I’ve done; whether that’s been losing weight or how I’ve viewed my own employment and some of the choices I’ve made in it. Similarly, sometimes there may be a paragraph or phrase within a book, article or paper that just makes sense of the world.  Perhaps we have to read it over a couple of times but it resonates within and explains or clarifies something that had been puzzling, or maybe it just makes sense full-stop in a “yes, now  I get it!” kind of way.

What we say to others can take on a life of its own.  We cannot control the effects, the ripples that emanate  following the words leaving our mouths (or maybe even our pens).  In his excellent book ‘Single Session Therapy’ Moshe Talmon  shows great insight and self awareness when he writes;

…on the whole, I realised that I had taken my interventions and my words too seriously.  Patients reported following suggestions that I could not remember having made.  They created their own interpretations, which were sometimes quite different from what I recollected and sometimes more creative and suitable versions of my suggestions.

Brilliant.  Words, once uttered, are beyond my control.  They take on the meanings that the hearer gives them.  Of course, Wittgenstein got there first on this but he doesn’t speak with a common tongue!

The things that we say in the moment can also harm.  Little things, throwaway (we assume) things that last an age in the life of those at who they are aimed, detrimentally effecting them more than we will know, certainly more than we ever intended.

Is there a take away message?  Maybe it’s important to give a little bit more thought to the language that we use, really it’s all we have to communicate our ideas about the world and, importantly, to help others with.  On the other side of the coin, listen.  Listen.  Listen.  You never know what you might hear.