The power of words.

Most of us have heard sayings and quotations about words. Words are just labels and yet they have the power to change your life. Often as a young teen, I would say hurtful things to my mother and actually end up really hurting her. She did try her best, but her best was never good enough for me. She was never as good a cook as my friends mother, or as good a teacher as my teacher or as well dressed as my neighbor. I always had something to pick on her.
I never did realize the power of my hurtful words till I heard something on similar lines from my daughter.

Life has a way of giving back. Just yesterday she said something like “mummy everyone thinks you are pretty, but they never see you in the morning when you wake up !!” I thought it was rather funny and pretended to laugh it off but when I thought about it, it actually bothered me. I thought about how I used to say things to my mother with the intention of hurting her. I thought that my daughter was purposely trying to say something to hurt me. Maybe hurting me was not her intention, but I took it as such and I started a whole debate on how she was being disrespectful and hurtful. She is still very young, so I don’t think her intention was to hurt me, but I already started thinking about when she would become a teenager and say things that would hurt me to no end. All this is going on in my own little brain and I have no proof that it will happen, but here I am thinking about how my daughter would behave towards me after 4-5 years. Is that warped or what????

This might sound a bit smug, but I think I have done a bit more research on child behavior and child psychology than my mother did. So instead of telling my daughter about the power of words and how it affects people, we did a little experiment. I had read about Masaru Emoto’s water experiment and how the water reacts to words. ( Google Masaru Emoto…if you don’t know about it). I saw the video and was quite fascinated, but being the skeptic that I am, I had to see the results for myself. I think I must have read somewhere about the rice experiment and decided to check for myself if it was really true that what we say has an impact?

The experiment goes like this.

Take two or three jars/bottles/Tupperware. On one jar write, I LOVE YOU, on another write, I HATE YOU, and if you have a third, write IGNORE. ( I made my daughter do that)

Next take boiled/steamed rice and put equal amounts in each jar. Cover the jar and say out what you have written on the jar, so to the jar that says, I love you…say with love..I love you and to the one that says, I hate you …say with emotion..I hate you and the one that says ignore, just leave it somewhere where you may not see it and just ignore it.

Do this every day for about a week to 10 days . The results will blow your mind.

In our case the Jar which said ‘I love you was all white with very few green fungus bits, The jar which had I hate you written was all black and green and the ignored one was the worst, it was all fuzzy and mouldy. We could hardly see the rice.









Exactly same content, same environment, the only difference being the written word and the thought given to it. If words can do this to rice, imagine what they can do to us and to our life.

So now I had ammunition to show to my daughter. As she was the one who had done the writing, it was really her experiment. She immediately understood how what she said had an effect on people. No she has not become mother Teresa and neither have I, but we are now a bit more aware and conscious of the words we speak and the thoughts we think.

My mother used to always tell me… “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t bother saying it at all.” But did I listen?

Well, I guess it is never too late to start