Ouch!

It’s ridiculously easy to hurt anyone’s feelings.

Yes, even that smug co-worker can be damaged with a flick of the wrong word. The same goes for a loud-mouthed drunk at happy hour. I’ve inadvertently bruised a few of the biggest and meanest muscle guys at my gym(s), but I fixed it right away. A puzzle with only a few pieces can be put back together quickly and there was no lasting damage.

No matter how impervious someone seems, they’re not.

No matter how much they want you to think they don’t care, on some level they do or else they wouldn’t be listening.

Caveat: If they’re at work, then they might genuinely not give a damn, but they might not really be listening, either.

Whenever two people interact voluntarily, there is the opportunity to do harm. Which brings me back to my point, it’s easy to hurt someone’s feelings.

I know you didn’t mean it like that. You were trying to be honest or helpful. You might even have thought you’d finally found the myth, the legend, that elusive “constructive criticism” we’ve all heard so much about. Well, guess what.

It doesn’t exist. There is only criticism.

Not only is there only criticism, a lot of innocent stuff that isn’t supposed to be critical at all is heard that way. Blame human nature. We’re a fragile and defensive bunch.

So if it’s so easy to hurt feelings whenever we open our mouths, what do we do?

I could say pay attention to what you’re really saying, not what you meant to say. I could say that, but there’s no point. If we could do that, then we wouldn’t need to be told to.

The best Auntie can offer is this: You should clean up after your words the way you clean up after yourself in Starbucks.

You don’t have to be a doctor to try to do no harm.

Also you should pick up after yourself in Starbucks. No one wants to deal with someone else’s crumbs and cups.