Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can make me think I deserved it.
—xkcd
Sticks and stones
24 May 2013 by 4 Comments
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[…] Sticks and stones. […]
The Fiction of Tom Simon & the Lies of H. Smiggy McStudge
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can make me think I deserved it.
—xkcd
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Ah, the famous saying from people who mean “I have no interest in your problems.”
My folks’ was better– “sticks and stones can break your bones, but words only do the harm you allow.” When questioned, they’d admit that the allowing part was NOT easy.
Robert Fulghum once commented on this, “Sticks and stones can break our bones, but words can break our hearts….”
It can be one of the few places where the Golden Rule is problematic, because “Do as you would be done by” can be inverted to mean “If it wouldn’t hurt me coming from you, I need not concern myself with saying it to you.” It’s tricky because the very insensitivity being recommended is the self-same thing that makes it difficult to grasp why it may be hard, or even undesireable, to achieve.