Words have the power to transform, uplift, or destroy. They can be used as tools of the mind, expressions of the spirit, or weapons of anger and fear.

Once upon a time there was a mean boy. His father gave him a board, hammer and bag of nails and said to him, “Hammer a nail into the board whenever you say or do something that might hurt someone.”

The first day, the boy hammered 37 nails into the board. After several days of that, the boy began to be a little nicer and the number of nails he hammered each day lessened. The boy found that it was actually easier to treat people nicely than to hammer the nails.

One day, he hammered no nails into the board and cheerfully told his father. His father replied, “From now on, if you go a whole day without being mean or hurtful, then you can draw one nail from the board.”

As time passed, the boy removed nails one by one from the board until there were none left. His father looked at the boy and said, “My child, you have done a good job! But do you see the holes on the board left by the nails? Even if you remove the nails, the holes will still be there. When you say or do hurtful things, it is like hammering a nail into someone’s soul. Even if you do something to remove the nail, the scars left are like these holes. The person will never be the same again, no matter how many times you apologize.”

This allegory is apropos of the power of words in our lives. But perhaps more important are not the words we use when communicating to others, but the words we use when speaking to ourselves, which ultimately inform and shape the world we experience and the nature of the relationships we create.