Unforgivable?

"Today is history. Today will be remembered. Years from now the young will ask with wonder about this day. Today is history and you are part of it. Six hundred years ago when elsewhere they were footing the blame for the Black Death, Casimir the Great - so called - told the Jews they could come to Krakow. They came. They trundled their belongings into the city. They settled. They took hold. They prospered in business, science, education, the arts. With nothing they came and with nothing they flourished. For six centuries there has been a Jewish Krakow. By this evening those six centuries will be a rumor. They never happened. Today is history." --Amon Goeth, Schindler's List.

Just as such words exemplify the hatred of those who would have seen the Jews eliminated, not only from Poland, but from the Human Race, words of hatred today undermine humanity. Our words are so shaping, even the seemingly smallest of things. This issue of Words is one that has greatly affected me, name calling was something I endured not only in elementary school, but through Jr. High and High School, and even from within my own home. I am still recognizing the impact of negative messages I heard in my childhood, and the full extent to which my thinking has been shaped.

We have so many derogatory names for people these days--labels, stereotypes, comments made off-hand, name calling between friends. But If we were to consider the impact our words have, for just a moment, nothing more need be done than to write down a list of these names, look up what they mean, and think, for one second, what it might mean to someone to be referred to as that. Things I have been called, which to some degree I have been or am: Liar, a Bastard kid, Slow, Weird. Things I have been called and am NOT: Stupid, a Lesbian, Deformed, a Bitch, a Mistake, a Waste of Time.... These words have shaped me in some way, sure there are others, many I remember, but these stand out, and have carried meaning for some reason. My point is this: Words of a hateful nature destroy, they're nothing but destructive. I don't care if its "joking", there is no "love-language" of tearing one another down. Things that maybe true, or not, don't need to be said if they're hateful. What are we to gain from putting others down?



...ok, I'll get of my soap box, but ya.