“My mother reads your column every week,” the gentleman said as he accompanied his mom through the line at the funeral visitation. She immediately added, “I read every word,” and before I could respond to her, she warned, “so be careful what you write.”
We both chuckled, but what wise words, not just for me, but for us all.
I felt like adding a stanza to the children’s hymn, “Oh, be careful little eyes what you see,” to include, “Be careful little fingers what you write.”
But of course, what we write begins with what we think. So maybe I should add still another stanza, a “preface,” that says, “Be careful little mind what you think.”
Hackers have taken over my Facebook page. A tech-savvy friend of mine has written Facebook support, explaining my plight. Their unhelpful response was that there was no problem, since nothing inappropriate had appeared on the page. “Don’t they understand that someone has taken my page?” I complained to my friend. “I’ll just delete the page and start a new one.”
“But you don’t have control of your page, so you can’t delete it,” he said.
So, until the hackers write something offensive enough to flag Facebook’s standards on speech, I’m stuck, and worse yet, it will appear as though I wrote it.
I’ve missed birthdays and various notices from Facebook friends, but here’s one thing I’ve not missed: reading the negativity that often takes up far too much space on that social media outlet.
I’ve thought about the number of people whose mind seems to be have been taken over, like my Facebook page, by someone else: call them mind-hackers, if you will, Mr. Anger, Mrs. Frustration, Miss Revenge or Master Hatred. When you post on cyberspace what those emotions seemingly demand, when you put into writing what they prompt, you will have to live with those words, potentially for the rest of your life, even when you no longer feel the way you did when you wrote them.
We must remember that what we write in ink may fade, but it’s permanent when you post it on the internet. Cyberspace is no respecter of persons. Whether you let someone have a piece of your mind, share a bit of office gossip, or divulge your amorous attraction to someone, once you write those words, you give up your control of where and when they might come back to haunt you.
But even if you write it on paper only, and even if they burn what you’ve written in an incinerator, still your words can prick a heart with pain for years.
It’s much better and safer to share something good, pleasant, and uplifting. And we can find that on social media, too. Now that I’m off Facebook, my wife relates the positive posts to me. I guess you could say she’s my filter, screening all the trash from my presence.
The 17th-century religious poet, George Herbert, served the Church of England when contentions were brewing between Roman Catholicism, The Church of England, and the Puritan movement. Rather than fueling the fires of controversy, Herbert was a model of peace and harmony, pointing people to faithful worship in Christ instead of forcing answers to questions that would only foment religious and social fragmentation. A master of words, Herbert once penned this timely sentence: “Good words are worth much, and cost little.”
Herbert’s aphorism is so short, but oh, how so powerful and fitting for our day.
Getting the words right takes patience and time. Rarely are the right words written in impetuous and volatile moods. Few are the exhilarating and effervescent moments in the writing task. More often, it’s downright grueling and demanding. That’s why Ernest Hemingway quipped, “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
Thanking the sweet lady at the funeral visitation, I moved on, walking away with a renewed determination to write the good words, the ones that cost little and are worth much, and hoping that whoever kyped my Facebook page is just as careful.