Fragile: Handle Words with Care
Fragile: Handle with Care
A clear and simple message is tacked to the bulletin board hanging on the wall in my writing room. My desk faces this wall, so I can’t help but see what’s on it. Among notes and quotes and tiny photos is a warning sticker for mailing boxes that contain breakable items. The warning is in black and bright orange ink, “Fragile, handle with care.” Why is it there?
Handle people with care
I tacked that sticker in plain sight to remind me that despite any bluffing, or puffing, or blustering about, or any posing, boasting, or talking too much, inside each person is a fragile heart. Which is not to say a fragile heart can’t be courageous, strong, and true. Such a heart would be open and openness is vulnerability, and vulnerability is human and fragile. “Handle with care” is simply a caution not to be reckless.
Handle words with care
What helps me improve carefulness? Practices such as swimming and journaling (writing by hand) help me to go more slowly in my body and my mind, increasing the odds I will take more thoughtful time when I write. I try, anyway.
Stopping to consider word choices and their effects on readers pushes me to do better in selecting the best words at the right place. That goes not only for conveying my own thoughts and feelings, but also those of a fictional character I might portray in a story.
Slow practices like those may also slow thinking before speaking: a worthy goal but not ever met 100%. Speaking of speaking …
Memorizing careful words
When I was in seventh or eighth grade at St. Francis de Sales Catholic School, our class had to memorize a speech. I guess the teacher gave us a list of speeches to choose from, I can’t remember. What I do remember and will never forget is that I went to work on memorizing President Lincoln’s famous “Gettysburg Address.” I practiced at home in front of my bedroom mirror. I recited it for my mother, an encouraging audience of one. Soon, I recited it at the front of the classroom, in the spotlight of attention, with hands sweaty and voice trembling. The full text of his speech is at the end of this post.
Lincoln’s memorable phrase
What I especially love about Lincoln’s speech is his line, “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
I understand from history that Lincoln cared deeply about the nation, the people who died to keep it free, and for its Constitution. What a phrase needed today: “Nobly advanced.” I love the evident care Lincoln took with his words.
Handle fragile Democracy with care
Can we nobly advance today? Can we keep our democracy those soldiers died for?
It has become impossible to miss public discourse on the ideal of democracy and the over-the-top disturbing, soul-rocking political events we’re slogging through like the mud of Gettysburg’s battlefields. What can we do? We can start by watching our words.
In closing, I urge us to take care of and take care with our words. In some ways, our words take care of us one way or the other.
Thanks for reading,
Charlene Edge
President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863
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