“Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue.”
ZENO, QUOTED IN DIOGENES LAERTIUS, LIVES OF THE EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS, 7.1.26
Today’s chapter of The Daily Stoic is a short one, probably the shortest I’ve seen in the book so far. And the message is clear: you can remedy any mistaken actions you take, but there’s no “undo” for things that you say out loud.
We all make mistakes. And you can generally recover from them. Errors can be corrected. And failure is a learning opportunity, as the popular nugget of wisdom goes.
But you can’t take back the words you say — once they’re out of your mouth, they’re out there forever. Sure, you can try to backtrack, or apologize. But if you’ve ever tried to qualify something that escaped your lips, or mitigate the effects of what you said, then you know how futile that turns out to be.
Better to be extremely careful about what you put out there, because once it’s said, it’s said.
Even if it’s the truth
Recently I had some hard discussions with my father. I was going to hold my tongue about certain feelings that I had, knowing that simply verbalizing them wasn’t going to change him — or our relationship — for the better.
But I lost control of my emotions (I might be a stoic-in-training, but I still fail sometimes), and I said some brutal truths that I probably shouldn’t have.
They were true. They’re still true. And I don’t know that I can apologize for saying the truth. But it hurt his feelings deeply, and I regret that.
Some things are better left unsaid, I guess, especially if saying them achieves nothing. Our culture has come to the conclusion that everything must be dragged out into the open and examined, and that no stone can be left unturned in the pursuit of healing and reconciliation. I’m not sure I believe that. I think some things are just better to not say out loud.
