You might recall, in The Odyssey, that Odysseus threw a javelin into Cyclops’ one eye, blinding him, in order for his men to be saved. The Greeks then hurried out toward open seas as Odysseus yelled:
“ ‘Hey, you, Cyclops! Idiot! The crew trapped in your cave did not belong to some poor weakling. Well, you had it coming! You had no shame at eating your own guests! So Zeus and other gods have paid you back.’”
“My taunting made him angrier” (continues Odysseus as he recounts the story). “He ripped a rock out of the hill and hurled it at us. It landed right in front of our dark prow and almost crushed the tip of the steering oar. The stone sank in the water; waves surged up. The backflow all at once propelled the ship landward…I told my men, ‘Row fast, to save your lives!’…We got out twice as far across the sea and then I called to him again. My crew begged me to stop and pleaded with me. “Please! Calm down…He hurled that stone and drove our ship right back to land. We thought we were going to die.’”
“But my tough heart was not convinced; I was still furious and shouted back again.”
The upshot of this scene is that Cyclops appeals to his father, Poseidon, to apply a further curse on Odysseus, and Dad happily complies.
After the fact, Odysseus acknowledged that he should have kept his mouth shut and sailed out of danger. Had he done so, the story would have been shorter, of course. But how many times do the boasts of the seemingly triumphant snatch defeat from the jaws of victory or create future embarrassment?
Remember the “Mission Accomplished” banner on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln? President Bush calls that one of his most obvious mistakes as President.
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported that, in a recent baseball game, the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Torey Lovullo, complained to the umpire about calls on balls and strikes and said something implying that the catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, Yadier Molina, was treated differently than other players. Molina took exception.
“’I used a poor choice of words and he (Molina) took offense to it,’ Lovullo said. ‘I wish I could take back what I said. It really wasn’t directed at him. I was just frustrated over what I was watching.’”
People of a Certain Age, if you have never spoken words (or written them in an e-mail) that, once you have said them, you wanted to reach out and grab them, like in a cartoon, before they reached their intended target, you have lived a purer life than mine (at least in this respect). How often, too, have words spoken in anger hit an unintended target as well?
Senator Daniel Akaka died recently at age 93. He was Hawaii’s junior U.S. Senator from 1990 to 2012. One of his staff members remembered:
“Capitol Hill is someplace where you show your power, but he was so deeply respected by his colleagues because of the fact that he had these values and they could trust him…He was really focused on Hawaii and what we need to do. He wasn’t focused on making sure that everyone knew that he was the one doing it.”
That life of aloha earned him a rating in 2006 by Time as one of the worst five U.S. Senators at the time they published a story about senatorial effectiveness.
Another former staffer said: “Senator Akaka knew how to hold people accountable—without attacking…I once told him, sometimes it’s very difficult to try to get your point across unless you’re heard at a certain level. Sometimes things just aren’t fair, and you want to call people out on it. I asked him ‘how do you do that as a leader?’ He looked at me and said, ‘measure your words.’”
Think about the leaders in our history whom we hold in highest esteem: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Luther King, Eleanor Roosevelt. All were masters of measuring their words.
“Plant a thought and reap a word;
Plant a word and reap an action;
Plant an action and reap a habit;
Plant a habit and reap a character;
Plant a character and reap a destiny.”
On-line you can see how many people in history have been credited with this or similar wisdom. Words matter.
Perhaps I reveal my own character flaw by saying that I form opinions of people based upon the words they use. Circumstance tempers my opinions; when one is angry, one’s judgment about what to say, and how, is usually impaired. Ask Torey Lovullo about that.
Odysseus’ boastful taunting contrasts with a sign in the window of our local Army recruiting office: Heroes don’t brag.
The Star-Advertiser article about Senator Akaka’s career concluded: “Akaka was admired by colleagues on both sides of the aisle. ‘He’s a loveable person and most of us are not that lovable,” Sen. James Inhole, R-Okla, told the Advertiser in 2003.’”
“’He was a quiet man,’ said U.S. Senator Carl Levin, D. Mich. in 2012. “He was a powerful force, one of the most decent people you’d ever want to meet here.’”
Enough said.
Daniel E. White
April 16, 2018