Man in the mirror
We can’t control which words we will remember or what moments will remain engraved in our brains forever, and any effort to forget them will be in vain. Some we remember because they are connected to significant events (surfing the Yahoo page in between calls that September 11 morning), others remind us of happy moments in our life (falling asleep watching Blade Runner), and there are those that get stuck in our heads but we don’t know why.
We can’t control which words or moments other people will remember, either. That’s scares me the most. My filters are kind of broken. I’m direct, honest, and very sarcastic, and I have yet to master the art of sugar-coating my speeches. But, what if I say something innocuous to me but not to my friend? What if I get mad at my kids and I yell? Will they keep it in a corner of their minds forever?
You can’t take words back. You can’t change your actions. You can apologize after the fact, say you were mad/sad/hurt/upset and that you didn’t mean it. It doesn’t matter because you said it or it happened. I realize it is impossible to go through life without hurting people, albeit inadvertently. Just be careful.
