By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
When summer draws to a close each year, I recall how—nearly four decades ago—a seven-year-old boy with impaired vision gave me some lasting insight about the incredible negative and positive power of my words.
It was 1984. I had just finished my initial year of studies at the University of Utah College of Law. I had good grades, but back then there were not many legal profession jobs available to first year students. Plus, for at least a few months, I needed a break and wanted to do something unrelated to the law.
I saw a job posting for a summer camp counselor with a group that worked with children with disabilities. I applied. I had no experience, but lots of interest and plenty of youthful energy. I got the job, some training, and a supervisor who knew what she was doing.
The program was a day camp held for one week in various Utah cities. The young campers joined us each morning at designated venues, typically in a park pavilion. We did various activities with them and fed them lunch, and then their parents picked them up in the late afternoon.
The children had a variety of disabilities. Some had developmental disabilities. One boy was on the autism spectrum, and never said a word to us. A sweet little girl in a wheelchair due to spina bifida told me she wanted to marry me. And then there was that seven-year-old boy who was born blind but opened my eyes to the power of words.
A goal of the camp program was to help the children experience things they had not done much before. One day, we took the campers into one of the beautiful mountain canyons near Salt Lake City for a picnic and short nature hike. At the end of the hike there was a small waterfall.
Eager to fulfill the mission of the program, during lunch I asked the seven-year old boy if he wanted to go see the waterfall with me. It was an innocent but clumsy request. The little boy replied, “I can’t see the waterfall.” He turned away and continued eating his lunch without further comment.
I felt awful about the way I had worded my well-intentioned question. In fact, years later, this memory returned when I read a line from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: “Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it.”
After my stumble using this form of magic, I walked over to the senior camp counselor, told her what had happened and sought advice. She listened, and rather than admonishing me, offered several suggestions that might rectify the situation. I decided to try them immediately.
I walked back over to the picnic table and apologized to the young boy for my earlier question. He said nothing. I then asked him, “Would you like to go with me to touch the waterfall and listen to it?” With much more enthusiasm than before, he responded, “Yes, please!”
We walked twenty or thirty yards to the small waterfall. I helped him reach out and he let the cool mountain stream run over his hands. Then we both stood there, quietly. I remember thinking that I had never really listened to a waterfall before. What I remember most, however, is the smile that young boy had on his face.
Words are magic, and so the words we use with each other really do matter. As I learned through trial and error, we can injure and exclude even when we intend the exact opposite. There are many ways to show we love and care for each other. One of the best, however, is to be just a little more thoughtful about what we say and how we say it.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
