Words that Kill Trees
I have a favorite story by Robert Fulgham that relates to yesterday’s T4D that I want to share today. It’t long been a favorite and is from his book… All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
IN THE SOLOMON ISLANDS IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC some villagers practice a unique form of logging. If a tree is too large to be felled with an ax, the natives cut it down by yelling at it. (Can’t lay my hands on the article, but I swear I read it.) Woodsmen with special powers creep up on a tree just at dawn and suddenly scream at it at the top of their lungs. They continue this for thirty days. The tree dies and falls over. The theory is that the hollering kills the spirit of the tree. According to the villagers, it always works.
Ah, those poor naive innocents. Such quaintly charming habits of the jungle. Screaming at trees, indeed. How primitive. Too bad they don’t have the advantages of modern technology and the scientific mind.
Me? I yell at my wife. And yell at the telephone and the lawn mower. And yell at the TV and the newspaper and my children. I’ve even been known to shake my fist and yell at the sky at times.
Man next door yells at his car a lot. And this summer I heard him yell at a stepladder for most of an afternoon. We modern, urban, educated folks yell at traffic and umpires and bills and banks and machines„especially machines. Machines and relatives get most of the yelling.
Don’t know what good it does. Machines and things just sit there. Even kicking doesn’t always help. As for people, well, the Solomon Islanders may have a point. Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts….
So let’s watch our words… and remember eye rolling is one of the loudest non-verbal yells of them all.
Kirk out
February 4th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
Kirk - read this one today: http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/04/autos/toyota.fortune/
not only should you watch your words - sometimes words need to be shared if you are a true leader…
February 4th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
Wow. I wanted to tell you that you had great thoughts for the day the last two days. I think respecting the absent is one of the most important, if not THE most important integrity marker, and one of the most challenging for me. Thanks for the reminder. BTW did you hear the gossip about….see!!!
…and the yelling. I absolutely see yelling as abuse of the spirit, and I think in some cases it constitutes more harmful abuse than physical abuse. My son had a fifth grade teacher who yelled and yelled and yelled at the kids, every day. I spoke with her about it, and she denied that it even was occurring even though I told her I had stood in the hall and listened to it myself. I gave her an example and she cried about how hard her job was, how she was just trying to motivate the class. I spoke with the principal who told me what an intelligent and well-traveled individual this teacher was. Then I spoke to the superintendent. He told me that he could hear her screaming in his office on the third floor (she was on the 2nd floor). He said he was “working up an education plan to help her stop yelling.” I asked him how many more times my son and the other children were going to be screamed at all day long for no real reason while he “educated her.” He said he was working on it, and so my son and I waited it out. At the end of the school year she retired, which was good for the future, but it was a long, hard year for my son, his classmates, and all the previous students of this teacher. I wonder how we can eliminate the angry raised voice from our societal behaviors. I guess we talk about it, role model good behavior and teach our kids better ways to express anger and frustration.
Just…thanks again.
Denise Schemenauer
Chief Executive Officer
Girl Scouts of Manitou Council