“The tongue is a fire, a world of inquiry: so is the tongue among our members that it defileth the whole body and seth on fire the course of nature, and it is set on fire of hell.” (James 3:6).
Steve Nyambe
The tongue has no bones, but is strong enough to break the heart. So be careful with your words. You may say them in laughter, but they will be remembered even in times of sorrow.
The boy and his temper
There was a boy who had a really bad temper and, because of that, he was easily disturbed. However, his loving father realised it and knew it could have a negative effect on his life. So he decided to come up with a way to help his son.
He gave him a bag full of nails. The nails were to help him do an exercise that was to show him that temper was really a bad thing for any living human being. He then told him that every time he lost his temper, he was supposed to hammer a nail into the wall. What an exercise! Sometimes the best way to teach is by engagement.
The first day
Interestingly, by the end of the first day, the easily angered boy had hammered 37 nails into the wall. This was so because every time he lost his temper, he had to drive a nail into the wall. Thus on that particular day, he had jumped the temper boundary 37 times. Days went by and different results were noted.
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As time went by, he started to control his temper. He had seen how dangerous it was to have such a terrible, cancerous nature. Light was beginning to dawn on his little soul that temper was not a good thing at all.
As weeks went by, the number of nails he hammered into the wall went down. In no time, the young man had learnt that it was easy to control his temper. Temper wasn’t supposed to trouble him anymore. This was so because it was now easy to control the temper than drive nails into the wall.
At the end of his psychotherapy process, he was now fully in control of his temper. Things had changed for the better. After noticing this remarkable improvement, the young man told his father.
This improvement was quite exciting. When the father heard the good news, he proposed something, for he knew the game wasn’t over yet. Something had to be done in order to produce the required results.
He told the young man to go and pull out those nails from the wall. The young man did as he was told and finally, all the nails were out. However, removing those nails was not easy. It wasted his energy. It left him exhausted. Now, the little mind was beginning to melt in a tenderly way.
The father took the young man to the wall again and said: “You have done well my son, but look at the holes in the wall.” The father told him that the walls were not going to be the same again.
Some walls in life will never be the same because of our tongues. Some words we say in life may fail to leave hope, but holes in other people’s lives. And these holes will always be difficult to fill up.
Remember, people may forget what you said, but they won’t forget how you made them feel.
Wise father’s lesson
“The only source of knowledge is experience,” observed Albert Einstein. This is what the wise father was trying to drive into that innocent soul: when you say things in anger, they leave scars, just like those holes on the wall. And those scars are always difficult to get healed in future.
When you hurt a person, no matter how many times you say “I am sorry”, the wound will always be there. People may forgive, but they don’t forget. The wound will not varnish, no matter what is used.
Words are powerful tools for expressing ourselves. They can be used for harming or healing. If properly crafted, words can be your life’s inspirational tool. They can inspire people to levels that appear impossible. Words can create a totally new and different future. Your future is moulded today and today is now. Now is the time. Don’t put it off to another day.
Napoleon Hill once said: “The world has a habit of making room for the man whose words and actions show that he knows where he is going.”
James Allen affirmed the same idea: “All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts.” Thoughts are powerful. It can be done. Be blessed.
