"Good Words Are a Precious Gift to Receive"

Sharon Randall is a syndicated columnist whose down-to-earth expressions sometimes inspire and sometimes ground me. In a recent column titled “Good Words Are a Precious Gift to Receive,” she asked her audience, “What’s the best thing anyone ever said to you? The most helpful, or even life-changing?”

She went on to share some of the messages she’d received throughout her life, and I, of course, in reading her column, reviewed some of the words that impacted me.

(Probably my father’s cheer-- “Give ‘em hell, Honey!” as I’d head to school or a ball game or vocal performance--count as some of the most impactful words in my memory.)

But Randall’s final comments touched me. She wrote, “Some people seem born with a gift for saying just the right thing at just the right time to make us smile, forgive ourselves, or do what we fear we can’t do. But we don’t need to be born with the gift to make it our own and use it to help others. It doesn’t take a great chef to know when someone is starving and [to know to] give them something to eat.” She ends with, “Who needs your words today?”

We often recognize when folks need cheering up or a gentle push to banish a worry or act on a lingering concern or a fleeting whim. Connecting with another’s energy in a smile or a wink can, as Frost suggests, “make all the difference.” Maybe today someone you know needs my dad’s “good words”: Don’t hesitate: “Give ‘em hell, Honey!”