Positive Word Power
The young mother, out on a shopping trip, noticed a plastic baseball bat that she was sure her 4-year-old son would adore. It was just the right size and weight for him, and would satisfy his yearning to play ball like his older brothers did. She couldn’t wait to see the smile on his face when she presented it to him.
On arriving home, she called her little boy into the kitchen where she was unpacking her bundles. “Shmuelly, look what Mommy bought for you. Your own baseball bat!” The little boy grabbed it gleefully and screamed, “Thanks, Mommy!” as he ran out to the backyard to test it out. Only minutes later, Shmuelly’s 3-year-old sister, who had been playing quietly in the sandbox, arrived at the door in tears.
“Shmuelly hit me with the baseball bat!” she sobbed.
“That’s what you do with the gift I gave you?” the mother scolded her son. “Do you think I gave you a bat so you could hurt people with it?”
A person’s intelligence, physical and mental capacities are gifts from Hashem. Nonetheless, like the little boy, people sometimes use these gifts to assert their superiority over others, forgetting that if it were not for Hashem’s kindness, they would be just as clumsy or forgetful or bad at spelling or math as the person they are chiding. Furthermore, no matter how brilliant a person is, there is always someone more brilliant still.
Goodness and righteousness do not depend on intelligence; they depend on the use to which a person puts the intelligence Hashem has given him. Neither does happiness depend on intelligence. The world is filled with people who live positive, productive lives, who are spiritually, financially and emotionally successful despite average or even below-average academic ability.
A person who taunts someone for his intellectual deficits can shake that person’s equilibrium, making him feel ashamed of his perceived lack. He may not have even thought previously that there was anything of which to be ashamed. Such simple statements as “Where’s your seichel?” or “Where have you been?” can create fissures in a person’s self-esteem, weakening his fundamental idea of himself.
The same is true of physical handicaps. Children, especially, tend to stare, tease or ostracize other children who appear “abnormal” to them. They might have a physical handicap or deformity, be mentally retarded or simply very short or skinny or fat or clumsy. It is up to parents to train their children to see past other children’s unusual features and understand that the other person is also a human being who wants love and acceptance.
In denigrating someone else’s mental or physical abilities, a person is actually asserting his own sense of superiority. It may be true that he is superior in that particular area, however, the correct response is not that of the little boy with the new baseball bat, to “hit someone over the head” with the gift Hashem has graciously given him.
In Other Words
If someone makes a mistake, indicating a lack of intelligence or competence, I will help him fix the mistake without commenting on his innate abilities.
Reprinted with permission from powerofspeech.org