Words and such.

It's all too easy to get caught up in what someone said or did – positive or negative. But, while the positives lift us up and lighten our hearts and step for a fleeting moment or two, the negatives...well, they stick. 

I can still remember many of the mean or hateful or off-the-cuff, unknowingly hurtful things that have been said to me through the years. When I was in late elementary and junior high school, I was larger than average, and that weight was the target of some comments that pierced straight to the heart. Even now, much slimmer, those words still ring in my ears and rattle in my head every now and then, in a weird purgatory of what feels like a million years ago and just yesterday all at once.

"But then you got fat," my best friend tossed out on a sunny day.

Sing "sticks and stones may break my bones" until you lose your voice, but the damage a person's words can cause is powerful enough to be reversible and irrevocable. But, really, that power and damage (or lack thereof) rest in your hands...not anyone else's.

Though there are days and times when I have disagreed – and certainly junior high was one of them – things said under the guise or pretext of meanness and hurtfulness are not a one-way street but a mirror. A reflection of the speaker's deep-rooted and often un- or under-recognized unhappiness, dissatisfaction or anger at life and the way it's unfolding.

I know that, ever since George Costanza's infamous "It's not you; it's me" scene, the phrase sounds tired and trite as a breakup reason and anything else. But here, in this instance, it's anything but. It's truth. When someone says something derogatory, it's not you. Not your struggle. Not your cross to bear. Not your words to internalize. Or rationalize. Or hypothesize. Not even a blip on your radar. 

Remember that. And, when you hear something rude or mean or intolerant or spiteful, exhale in and then release the breath, and with it, all the words just spoken. Let them out. Let them go. And go on your way, as if the moment never happened.