Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that is true. Our words have the power to potentially cause either a lot of pain or joy. Sadly enough, not many of us recognize this hidden power of our words. The world renowned psychologist Carl Jung once said, “The man who promises everything is sure to fulfill nothing, and everyone who promises too much is in danger of using evil means in order to carry out his promises, and is already on the road to perdition.”
The promises of this world are, for the most part, vain phantoms; and to confide in one’s self, and become something of worth and value is the best and safest course because not everybody can be trusted in this “modern, fast-paced, ever-changing” world of ours. Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them. Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible. A person could make ten thousands of different promises to different people, but that’s not the point ; the point is, we must take every step possible to actually do what we say. Like the famous proverb goes, “Actions speak louder than words”, we must focus on DOING things rather than SAYING we’ll do things.
Since our words have so much power, we must avoid making empty promises. It is easy to make promises – it is hard work to keep them. But, why does it have to be so hard? Who complicates it?
The only answer to that is being honest – with yourself and everybody else around you. Only then, you wouldn’t have to resort to making promises you can’t keep because YOU know the truth and when you do, you’ll say the right thing. Unknown to us, our words may mean a LOT to someone around us. Atleast for the sake of that person’s feelings, we must try to be honest and only make those promises that we can keep. It is really not that hard. There’s this song by Def Leppard called ‘Promises’ and a few lines go like this :
I won’t make promises that I can’t keep
I won’t make promises that I don’t mean
I’ll even mean the things I tell you in my sleep
I won’t make promises babe, that I can’t keep
So, ultimately, it all boils down to this : don’t keep promises which cannot be fulfilled.
All Things Optimistic 