Keep away from poisonous words!

Sometimes talking to other people serves to remind you of how good you have it. Cliché as it may sound, no matter how hard you consider your life at any particular moment, someone else has very likely had it much worse.

In the most interesting of circumstances, this week I came across one of those people who just gives me the urge to grab a notebook and a pen for the sake of not forgetting a single word they say! Meeting people like that is quite rare, but not uncommon in my experiences and not for the first time it all began with that intuitive feeling you get when for whatever reason, you connect with someone, or are drawn to them in some way, spiritual or otherwise.

In this instance, this individual in particular caught my attention because his general positive outlook to life bounced off mine in such a spectacular way, and though he’d been through some interesting circumstances, to say the least, he still had a lot of love left in his heart. Because of some of the things he’d been through, he spoke quite a bit of hardening his heart, so people couldn’t get through to hurt or take advantage of him in any way. He was a bit of a gangster, and that was clear from the onset, but his vibe was quite different. He seemed to be on his own ‘heights’, was a phenomenal chef and musician. In short, he was blessed.

He’d lost a lot in life, but from the way he spoke, I could tell that he’d gained a lot more. By learning the hard way he’d learned to separate friends from foes, even when those people who didn’t have his best interest at heart masqueraded as though they genuinely cared. He’d learned to discern superficial aspects of life to what was real, and let go of people who really didn’t want to see him reach anywhere in life. People who had this image painted of him, who didn’t like when he changed the image, and it turned out to be worth more than they could have ever imaged.

As we spoke he shared an important lesson with me: “Don’t ever use words like maybe, when, if, think, can’t, but or say you’re not sure you can do something. Anytime someone says those words, run.”

Those he said were poisonous words that kept a person from reaching their true potential. What was really important was for a person to believe in himself or herself, once they could achieve that level of self-confidence, anything was possible.

Needless to say, despite all I took in from him in that one conversation I don’t ever want to forget, I managed to share some of my own words with him. I let him know despite everything negative he’d experienced, becoming just like the people who hurt you by hardening your heart wasn’t the answer. I shared my own perspective of always maintaining a positive frame of mind, something I’m quite certain he already knew. It was perfectly alright to keep your guard up to an extent, but there was always need for people with positive spirits to share love with others, even at times when it seems like the most difficult thing.

“Love everyone,” my friend Torent who was also there at the time told him, to which he responded: “Easier said than done, you can’t love a demon.”

Without hesitation I agreed wholeheartedly, but while I recognize that there are people who harbor hatred, who’re closer to the dark than to the light, I know good always overcomes evil.