I am amazed at how many times I look at something I have written, think it looks fine, publish it, only to find out that I have typos, or grammatical errors or misspellings. Just when I think it is ready to go…there it is, something I did not see before.

Like the last post I had, I looked at it numerous times, thought it looked and flowed nicely. I publish, only to go back less than an hour later and find two, yes two, errors that were so obvious, and yet I missed them. Even the auto-correct had missed them. And this now is the second time I have written this. I originally had it as a draft, incomplete. When I came back to my writing, I hit publish and put something out there not completed. I don’t know what I was thinking; I was thinking it wouldn’t publish? I don’t know. I needed to send it to trash and start over so someone would not go to my page and read something that was not finished. WOW, what a life.

How many times do we walk through life and wish that we could have a re-do, or have an auto-correct? If only we had an editor walking by our side, or in our head, that would make the correction before the words came out of our mouth! Wow, what a concept that would be!

I think we do have an auto-correct in our brain for words that come out of our mouth. I think it is a better system than anything that we have for the written word. It is called a conscience. And nicely so, we don’t have to spell words when they come out of our mouth. As I am getting older, gaining wisdom, and growing in maturity, I try to be more aware of what I say and how I say it.

While I know that we are in a world where instant messaging is rampant and we want everyone to know what we are doing, every minute of the day, we still need to think; we need to think about what we say and how we say it. We need to realize that everyone does not need to know every detail of our life.

I made the mistake years ago of having my emails sent out as soon as I hit the “send” button. I wanted to get those emails out straight away! That is fine until you write something in the heat of the moment. You are writing from raw emotion and not necessarily thinking about those words and how they can impact someone else. Because of that incident, my emails sit in my outbox for a while, just in case I need to edit (or delete) those words.

It was a Friday night, my husband was out-of-town and the children and I were watching a movie, theatre-style (which meant with all of the lights out). That Friday night was also the deadline for Girl Scout leaders to get their cookie orders input into the on-line computer program. They had until midnight. You see, I was the Girl Scout Product Sales Coordinator for the county where I live and it was my responsibility to make sure that all of the orders were entered and looked correct. I hoped that everything would go smoothly and there would be very few problems. What do they say about Murphy’s Law? Well Murphy was present that night.

Too make a long story shorter, a leader phoned me and asked if she could have an extension on the entry deadline. I had to tell her no because I had deadlines. I asked her what I could do to help. She hung up on me as she did not like my answer. She then called back and said that her internet was down and she had phoned someone to come fix it (after 8:00 pm Friday night) and that she also was having a birthday party for her child and that I needed to be reasonable and give her more time. (I think the comment about bringing in a repairman was to guilt me into acquiescing) Numerous times I offered to input the information for her and she would not have that. She spent ten minutes yelling at me (and I have to admit, I started yelling back) when in those ten minutes, I could have had all of her information input.

Well, by the time I got off the phone with her (she had hung up on me again), I was very frustrated. This leader sent me an email which was not very kind. I wrote an email to my boss (BTW, I was a volunteer in that position) and used words that you would use when you are frustrated. I hit the send button and the email was sent immediately.

That was all well and good BUT instead of hitting the “forward” button, I hit the “reply” button. This ranting email, that was meant for my eyes and the eyes of my boss, was sent directly to the person of which I was ranting! I was devastated!!!!

So now not only did I need to phone my boss and explain what I had just done (at 10:00 at night), I needed to apologize to the volunteer for my inappropriate words. After I made those phone calls, I immediately went to my email settings and changed how my emails were sent. I would never allow my words written in frustration to go out straight away. I would take the time to mull over what I had written and make sure that it represents who I am.

I will not say that I am perfect in what I say or write. But I will say that I was greatly humbled by what transpired that night.

I do make sure that if I say words in anger, they are not words I will regret at a later date. I make sure that what I write represents who I am. I make sure that what I say in confidence is something which does not shame me if that confidence is broken.

I do believe in freedom of speech. But I also believe that just because you have that right, it does not mean you should say anything you want. I do believe you have to take others into consideration. It is so important that I “do unto others…” I truly wish there were more people out there that thought of the consequences of their words and the way they are used.

There are two things that stick in my mind about my mother: 1) I have never heard her swear, not even a “gosh” or “golly” and 2) I have never heard my mom raise her voice or say an argumentative word towards or about my father. She always said that she doesn’t swear because she has too much respect for herself-that her language represents who she is and she does not want foul language to be that representation. WOW, such wisdom.

I want my words to represent who I am. While I regret, terribly, that Friday night when I wrote such wrong things, I wouldn’t change that night for the world because it helped make me a better person. How I wish I could have learned that without the controversy but that is not how it happened.

How can I or how can others in this world get out that message? How do we educate others to believe that their language represents who they are? How do we make the world a better place through OUR words? I hope that maybe my words and my actions could bring people to action. There are so many people out there that say, ‘if this can change the life of just one person…’ well I don’t want that; I want this to impact more than one person.

I WANT TO IMPACT THE WORLD!!!!! I want people to realize that words have the power to uplift or to destroy. My grandfather always said, “Do not raise yourself up by bringing others down.” Once again, such wisdom. I want to be a person who raises others up and in return, makes me a better person, a person that makes my mom proud.

I hope and pray that I have the chance to change the world, one little (but powerful) word at a time.

(Oh and BTW, there was only one suggested change to this blog when I hit the “publish” button)