Are Your Actions and Words Friends or Strangers?

People don’t always hear what you say but they always see what you do.

The statement above once danced deliriously around my head while chanting “Na na na boo boo..”  I had been teaching one of my daughters to drive.  From the very first time she got behind the wheel, I noticed the odd way that she held it.  Her hands would always default into a really peculiar position.  Each time, I’d say something like, “Here. Why don’t you put one hand here, the other hand here…and if you have a third one, put it here.”

Finally, she got to where she’d arrnage them in a more reasonable position - but I noticed that the reasonable position was always Plan B.  Plan A was to instinctively go with a haphazard, funky positioning.

One day - about one week and 200 Tylenols into the lessons - I got into my rightful “Starbucks, Here I Come” position in the driver’s seat.  Turned the key, popped in a little vintage Janet Jackson and grabbed the wheel.  As Janet was demanding to know what someone had done for her late-ly, I happened to catch a glimpse of my hands. 

Oh, yeah, my hands were getting three kinds of freaky.  My way of holding the wheel was kind of cock-eyed, too.  She had obviously picked up the technique from watching me… probably the last person one should pick up driving techniques from.  Unless, of course they have Nascar or demolition derby aspirations.

On the way to Starbucks, it occurred to me that some of the other things that bothered me about her driving could also be traced back to me.  While cruising down the road, wind-surfing out the window with one hand and controlling the wheel with the other, I remembered the times I’d ask her, “Why do you keep taking one of your hands off of the wheel - that’s dangerous.  There.  Good girl, both hands.”  Once she even told me that she just wanted to hang it out the window.  I told her there was nothing out there for it, so put it back on the wheel.

Funny how, when it’s our beloved children that’ll be driving, we do everything short of putting a helmet on them.

Anyway, the whole thing made me think.  People, watch us daily - whether we know it or not.  And it’s, of course, not just our children who are keeping an eye on us. It’s something to kind of tuck away and keep in mind. 

They watch our driving (horrors), our temperment, our manners, our character, the way we relate to people, etc.  Our actions either betray our words or back them up.

For example:

• If we tell people that we’re laid back and cool, then we flirt with road rage if one car pulls out in front of us - we’re lying to ourselves as well as everyone else.
• If we tell people that we’re kind and helpful, yet we never do so much as one thing to help another person - we might have a skewered definition of the words kind and helpful.
• If we tell people they should respect us, we might need to think again.  I saw a t-shirt last week that read, “If you have to DEMAND respect, you haven’t EARNED it.“  Incredibly, profoundly true.
• If we tell someone else that they have a problem with their temper, yet we’re the ones who are always into it with someone - we’re making a fool out of ourselves.

The point is, people are watching you and they’re watching me.  We can say and write whatever we want to. We all possess vocabularies consisted of countless words.  Anyone can arrange them to create any thought or statement they want to.  I could say that I weigh the same amount as Keira Knightley and that I’m completely fed up with not being able to put on weight, no matter how many trips I make to Dairy Queen. I can say that the dipped cones never show up anywhere on my body, unless, of course some drips onto my little Keira-sized hands  - but it doesn’t make it any of it anywhere near the truth.  Oh, that it were.  DQ wouldn’t have enough chocolate to sustain me. 

Every now and then, take a good look in the mirror as the soundtrack of your words plays in the background.  Are they in agreement or so out of tune that it makes you laugh?  If the words are setting the bar beautifully high, hold your actions accountable.  Your words are creating the YOU that YOU desire to be.

Now start living up to them.