Is talk cheap?

Talk is cheap. You hear it all the time, I guess that's why you hear it so much - cause if it had value to it like, say ... time (or so they say), then people would probably save it. While I do believe that actions speak profoundly louder than words, I feel as if we live in a society where talk is abused so much we start to forget how much power it really holds.

When I was growing up I would often hear the saying "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." I even said it a few times, the truth though was that words did hurt - they still do, probably more than a stick or a stone ever could.

Now when I sit and think about the negative power of words and how forgetful I have become of how it feels to have someone speaking to you not out of love, I can't help but think about the power of positive words in the opposite direction. What if I spent a little more time encouraging those around me and sitting down and talking with someone that's going through a rough time? What kind of power is in that?

I recently had a patient tell me that she was bored and lonely, I had asked her if there was anything I could do for her and she told me that if there was a drug I could give her to help with her boredom and loneliness she would gladly accept it, I told her I'd be back in two minutes. When I came back I didn't have any medicine, but I had a chair and a 30 minute break, exactly what she needed. Over the next couple of weeks I would come in early and stay late talking with her, she was in her 80s so we would talk about her youth and her love for dancing and plants and then when I brought her a plant she started crying. There's power in listening too. A few days later she went home, not to be with the Lord - but to be with her daughters, and the physician came up to me to thank me. Now in full disclosure the main reason I started spending time with her was to get away from my Charge Nurse trying to find busy work for me at the end of my shift, but what this doctor said really opened my eyes - "We were sure she was going to have to go to a rehabilitation facility because she wasn't thriving here, but once you starting talking to her something changed, she became more active - she said she wanted to get healthy so she could dance again cause you said you'd take her dancing if she was able. Your words and time turned this lady's prognosis completely around." This blew my mind.

I don't know how or why I became so cynical or aggressive or negative, but if my positive words were able to have that big of an effect I can only imagine what my negative words did, and I want to be proactive in the positive now.