How Close To Being Shattered Are You?

The adage featured for today’s FANDANGO’S FEBRUARY EXPRESSIONS is:

People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones

As soon as I saw this expression, I was convinced I have written on this subject before, and it turned out I had. The post below was also prompted by Fandango, and as I am very tired, I thought you might let me off giving it another spin;

I saw the picture prompt from Fandango earlier. It made me think of one thing. Throwing stones…glass…glass houses. You should not do it! I knew that expression meant something but I could not remember exactly it’s wording or what it meant. So I did what many of us do when we are looking for answers – I googled it!

Aron Jäger@unsplash.com

“people who live in glass houses

should not throw stones”

Amongst the various definitions and explanations Google showed me where these:

• 

  Hayley Williams – Sarcastic Diva

  we should not criticise others, because everybody has faults of one kind or another.

• if you don’t take criticism well, don’t criticise others, especially not for faults you yourself have (you are likely to receive criticism in return)
• we should be careful how we treat other people (with our words and actions) because we can all be easily hurt
• we should not say insulting things to other people because they could easily do the same thing to us
• we all have faults and weaknesses, who likes it when someone else points out all our faults to us?
• people (including ourselves) can be as vulnerable as glass, “throwing stones” in the form of criticism can shatter someone

I will leave Google’s helpful explanations there. But it did bring back to my mind that there are many people who are so close to breaking. The last thing they need is criticism. If we had any idea of what was going on in somebody else’s mind and heart, we might be a lot more cautious with our words. If we had any idea of how pain-staking it is to rebuild a person who has been shattered and now lies helpless in a million jaggered pieces that are painful to touch.

Words can heal or harm. Words can crush. Caramel was crushed by words. It’s taken a lot to get over that. NO GOING BACK! I have built wooden shutters over all of my glass windows. I don’t intend to let anyone shatter me again. Close the shutters the moment someone tries to attack. Protect the highly polished and beautiful glass inside that is also very fragile and extremely precious.

But I am not always aware of those throwing stones at me. How close are they to being shattered? I should be very careful in what I say. Sometimes maybe the best reaction is just to ignore the stones and not react at all. Keep the wooden shutters firmly closed and wait until they are bored and have moved along. Hope they won’t go through the experience themselves of someone shattering them to pieces. I would hate to hurt anyone the way I have been hurt.

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This was my response to FANDANGO’S FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE:

and is also my reSponse for today’s FANDANGO’S FEBRUARY EXPRESSIONS: