No Bad Words, Only Bad Intentions

George Carlin once said "There are no bad words, bad thoughts, bad intentions, and wooooords. "

Most people would beg to differ with him, but he is right. Words have no power of their own. A word is nothing more than a collection of sounds. The only reason a word is bad, is because we as humans made it bad. Yet words alone are sometimes enough to start wars. True, there are some words out that that are almost guaranteed to make your grandmother blush. It isn't the word itself we are reacting to, but the meaning we have come to associate with the word that we react to.

Words don't hurt humans, humans hurt humans.

All around me I hear the words people use, and I watch how other people react to them. I have always thought it strange that many of the words that cause me to cringe appear to have no effect on other people at all and vice versa. When someone cusses in front of me and uses the old "Pardon my French." apology I usually respond with a polite, "It's okay, I speak French as well.

While I am a bit of a profanity lover myself depending on my mood. I have discovered that a little bit of profanity has never killed me, nor has a lot of profanity for that matter... To my knowledge a simple bad word has never killed a single human being.

I'm not one to cringe when the occasional f-bomb silences the rest of the room. There are words though, that will get my hackles up every time. And they are far more common than any known "bad word" on the planet.

I have heard husbands and wives speak to one another in ways that even mortal enemies usually refrain from. Those words build up over time, they wear the relationship down. It may be a quick way to control the situation in the short term, but that type of talk will eventually destroy the relationship totally leaving only bitterness in its wake. Those types of words really can hurt.

I have seen parents speak to their children in ways that no adult should ever speak to a child. It is as if the fact that their children are human beings too has never occurred to them. Those same people may gasp when their child says "damn" but they think nothing of hurling insults at their children. They may disguise them as humor, or they may explain it away as discipline but it doesn't matter why they do it. Those words can still hurt.

There are parents out there who refuse to allow their children to say hell but don't blink and eye when that child calls another child stupid, when they tell their sister they are ugly, when they tell the boy down the street that he is fat. Parents of bullies are notorious for making excuses, a child without consequences has no reason to change his behavior. Words can't really hurt those parents insist...

Mere words have lead children to end their own lives, and even the lives of others.

The American culture tells us that what really matters is outward appearances. They are constantly pressing us towards a new standard of beauty. The moment we meet someone we begin to evaluate them. How much like us are they? How different?

I have always been different, so it makes no sense to me to judge others for being different than me. People are amazing, plainly and simply amazing. The so-called crazy ones, the so-called stupid ones, the so-called ugly ones. All of them are beautiful in their own way. All of them add color to an otherwise dull universe.

Skin color is no way to judge a person. Neither is status in life, who they have sex with or what kind of car they drive. None of that outside stuff really matters, because the true beauty of humanity is on the inside. One persons ugly is another persons beautiful.

Life is all about how you look at it. No one person is superior to another, that is all a lie. We all experience the same things in different ways.

This summer I attended a party where a large variety of people were represented. There were a lot of people in one place that wouldn't normally be together. There was one person in particular that I haven't spent a lot of time with in the past. About fifteen minutes into the conversation I understood why. It appeared that n***er was his favorite word.

That is one word that I was raised to believe is never acceptable. Some words were created specifically to wound, to cause emotional damage to another person, to exert control. If the enemy is less than human, they become easier to hate. It is far to easy to believe For some reason that means we are not worthy of the same things, the same life as someone else. That we can negate our own flaws by pointing out the differences in others and calling them flaws?

George Carlin taught us about the seven words you couldn't say on television, but there are far more words that you shouldn't say on television or anywhere else for that matter.

"There are no bad words, only bad intentions."

So many, many bad intentions.

Why do we even have words intended to hurt? What kind of world are we bringing our children into?

A strange world, that's for certain.

We live in a world where words can create anything. There are nasty words like cancer and divorce, they actually leave a bad taste in your mouth. Other words, words like rape just feel icky. Some words are nice, like infant, or kitten, or ice cream. They are words that can't help but make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

If you like those sorts of things that is. That's what is funny about words.

Words mean different things to different people. What is devastating to one is humorous to another. Have you noticed that when it comes to the British and the Americans use of the language? We both speak English but we speak it in a whole different way.

In the U.S. certain words make women faint, in Britain those same words are used openly and nobody seems to gasp and clasp their hand to their throat. There it's okay, it's just a word. It's a strong word, but just a word. Those kinds of words weren't created to hurt, they were created to express, sometimes to insult, but not really to cause any harm.

People get so intense over words. Isn't it amazing?

The word liberal can make a conservative scream, but the word conservative can do the same to a good liberal. It's really quite stupid when you think about it. We all have more sames than differences.

It begins with two eyes, a nose, a mouth, two ears. The skin on our bodies, the air in our lungs. We all have basically the same body, with only slight variations. We all have the same feelings and emotions on some level, we all want basically the same thing...

Though we all seem so different, all human beings basically want the same thing.

We all want our needs met. That's it, that's all.

From the prude to the porn star, from the rich to the poor. It doesn't matter who we are, all of us just want our needs met.

It is only in those needs that we differ.

Some of us need love, others need to find their next fix, some need to take care of others and some need to look out for number one. Some just need to speak, and some just need to be heard.

Do you see why I say life is beautiful yet?

It isn't the differences that really divide us, it is words. We use words to label others, and sometimes we let those words decide who is our friend and who is our enemy.

A label can't even begin to describe the person underneath.

People are highly complex creatures, as much as I write about psychology with regard to both adults and children, I know that I could spend the rest of my life addressing these topics and never even begin to scratch the surface.

Labels are just more words, and a few simple words can never begin to describe the real person underneath. Those things on the surface, nationality, religious affiliation, even sexual preferences don't even begin to tell us who a person is.

Yet those words are the things that stop us in our tracks, that raise a flag and say this person is same, or this person is different. We are all same, and at the same time we are all different. That is beauty, that is truth, that is passion.

While I am passionate about some things, you are passionate about others. Those passions might even collide from time to time. We might be pulling in opposite directions, but the direction isn't what is important, it is the passion.

Passion, now there is an awesome word. Passion. I believe in passion as well. I believe in being excited about life, in being involved in life, in actually living life. I believe that nothing is worth doing unless you can do it with passion.

Most of all I believe in words, in the power of words to hurt and the power of words to heal. I am just as passionate about words as I am about life. I love playing around with words, seeing what I can create with them.

Sometimes I just write, but now and then I create a tapestry. Something that is just as vivid as a photograph, I can help you see what I see when I look inside of my mind. Those words are special to me, because the sharing of thoughts and ideas is special to me.

Our ideas are a part of the real person underneath. Not the ideas that were force fed to us by someone else, but the ideas that we found within ourselves. Those are the ideas that have power, those are the ideas that can change the world.

Words have that much power.