say what you want

I’ve often wondered the motivation behind the hurtful words we sometimes throw at other people. In my own life, when I have said cruel things to those I love it is almost always from a place of hurt or frustration. But why say mean things to a stranger? I used to think it was just a nasty attitude, but I now suspect that it, too, comes from a place of hurt or anger. Perhaps some people have no one close to them to whom they can safely lash out. Perhaps they have hidden fears that they are afraid of revealing. Maybe they are not even aware of how much they are hurting inside. We all have wounds, some easily identifiable, some festering inside undetected until they become so huge that we can no longer ignore them. Or maybe some have never known real pain but see it all around them and have a real fear that it may someday touch them. With this in mind, perhaps the healthy, though difficult, response to cruel words is sympathy rather than retaliation.