I’ll share a lesson that blogging has taught me.
I knew about this concept before I started blogging, but blogging really brought it home for me.
It’s this:
A soft answer turns away wrath.
It’s from a biblical proverb, of course: “A harsh word stirs up anger, but a soft answer turns away wrath.”
I can think of multiple occasions early on in my blogging days when someone would hop into the comments, guns blazing, telling me how I was wrong.
I would always respond kindly, of course, but looking back, I was unconsciously thinking, “This person is a lost cause. I’m gonna be kind, but it’s not going to change anything.”
And time after time, I was amazed to see how many people really did a 180 after a gentle response/explanation from me.
It’s shocking, in a good way, to see how a gentle response acts as a very effective flame extinguisher. And I am sure that a fiery response would have just the opposite effect (we do see this a lot on the internet!)
Of course, a soft answer does not always calm someone down. But it sure does work a lot of the time.
And even when kindness doesn’t “work”, it’s still the right thing to do, and it’s still the type of person I want to be.
You’re a much nicer person than I am. And wiser, too, no doubt. I completely ignore those kinds of comments because I just hate engaging with that sort of thing, but it’s almost certainly more beneficial to address it the way you do.
What an excellent lesson for us all!
I discovered from public lecturing that it brings out the nasties and the crazies and my blogging friends say the same. I am sure that you have experienced this also. I have grown a tougher skin and now do not take it personally. After all, they do not know me–it is just an avenue for them to vent their unfortunate ideas.
Oh yes, the internet makes people so bold! I think a lot of people who leave unkind comments would probably not come up and say those things to my face.
And yes, rudeness is almost always more about the other person than about you!
A wonderful lesson that we can all learn from.
Love how you said since that’s the person you want to be. A thousand times yes! I always speak about kindness to my students. I hope they always remember to be kind. No matter what.❤️
My lesson: My husband and I did foster care for 15 years, specializing in male teenage sex offenders. One boy stayed with us for a number of years. About a year into it, he was sent home for starting a mini-riot in the lunchroom of his high school. (Not all sexual predators are teens. There was one facility in the US that specialized in kids as young as 5, which gives you come clue as to what those poor babies had lived through in their first years of life.) When I asked him why he got into trouble, he said he was not prepared for a test in the class that came after lunch. Then he said something that really changed me: “I knew that you don’t mind troublemakers but you really don’t like dumb people. I didn’t want you to think I was dumb.” The worst part was that he was right, that I had a lot more patience for kids who misbehaved, that to some degree I liked kids who were fighters and would go out into life not afraid to buck authority and select their own paths. I had a lot less patience or ability to deal with people who were not very smart. His remark ended up changing the trajectory of my career several years later–I became head of a program that taught parents (many of them adoptive, but some biological parents who had sobered up too late to stop themselves from causing brain damage by drinking while pregnant) how to work with children with intellectual and behavioral issues. I still live with the shame of not only being harder on kids struggling with intellectual issues, but not recognizing it until a 15 year old told me how he saw me.
This is a beautiful point. A soft answer turns away wrath. If only we could always implement it…too often my pride gets in the way.