Positive Word Powet

I think if we take a left at that light, we’ll find the entrance to the highway,” the lost husband tells his skeptical wife.

He makes the turn, travels a few miles, follows a sign to the highway, travels another few miles and, seeing no more signs to the highway, finally stops at a red light.

“Look where we are,” his wife says. “That’s the same supermarket we were at a half-hour ago.”

“No, it’s not,” the husband assures her. “It’s just the same chain. It’s a different … oh, no, you’re right. I give up! We’re right back where we started.”

The sense of trying hard and getting nowhere is the definition of despair, which arouses the universal response of “I give up!” Therefore, ona’as devarim that forces a person to revisit “lost” times in his life is a particularly painful, deflating type of hurtful speech.

Sometimes, the motivation for this type of ona’as devarim is jealousy or frustration. When a person sees the growth and change the other person has been able to accomplish, he feels inferior. For instance, a man meets up with an old acquaintance from high school who has now, 15 years later, become the head of a new yeshivah in the community. “Some Rosh Yeshivah,” the man says, half-jokingly. “I remember you when you couldn’t even wake up for minyan on Shabbos morning.”

Reminding someone of past errors is also misconstrued by some people as a method of reproof. A father wants his son, a struggling C student, to spend more time reviewing his learning. The son makes a commitment to do so, and keeps to it for several weeks. His grades begin to improve. Then, one fine spring day, all the boys in the neighborhood are outside after school, enjoying the last hour of sunlight. The boy joins them, and that night, his review is late, tired and rushed.

“You can barely keep your eyes open!” his father exclaims. “You’re going to go right back to being a C student!” He believes that by reawakening the child’s shame in his past behavior, he will inspire him to stay far from it.

For the boy, however, it is as if all the rungs he had climbed since he made his commitment collapsed under his feet. He sees himself as a person who tried to improve and failed. Eventually, he begins to feel that trying is not worth the effort.

Nobody is born perfect. Our Sages teach (Sefer HaBris 2:4:18) that man is constantly in motion and his mission in life is to keep moving forward. Therefore, there will always be habits, places and mistaken ideas people leave behind as they follow their forward path in life. When one reminds another person of the things they are trying to leave behind, one forces the person to continue carrying them, thereby increasing rather than lightening the burden of a fellow Jew.

In Other Words

Instead of reminding a person of what he once was, I will encourage him with admiration for what he has become.

Reprinted with permission from powerofspeech.org