Richochet

I think people are frequently too careless with words. Assuming that you spend a lot of time talking to people you actually care about in one way or another, you should be aware that the things you say (and do, really), don’t just have a single, initial effect. They aren’t forgotten after. They bounce around inside someone’s brain and inside their life, and they connect. They matter.

I think we tend to view conversations only as important if we set out to make them important from the beginning. We say “We need to have a serious talk,” and think those are the only conversations that will stick. But the comments we make to people we care about stick in weird ways we can’t predict, and they careen off of other things we can’t imagine.

All I’m saying is, be kind. Say the sorts of things that will be remembered in echoing voice-overs during a person’s hardest trials and give them the strength to push through, not the sorts of things that will be whispered over fade-outs at the end of a tragedy.