Kind, Powerful Words

I’m looking back now on this picture taken two years ago, when I was sitting in the room pictured above. I had been working on a full-scale musical in that chair, in front of that keyboard pictured for about 10 years at that point.

Writing a show is a long process of stops and starts. You create songs you thought were great and then the next day realize are mediocre. Often, you don’t try to fix them – you just throw them away and start over.

When I took that picture, I’d been through ten years of songs thst had been discarded or reworked, not to mention the 90 page script.

The past several months of rehearsal had been a series of script rewrites that never seem to end. I’m sure my actors had run out of ink in their printers by that point.

Creating something beautiful is often a lonely, discouraging process. I don’t mean to whine, but I had seriously considered scrapping the whole thing at times. Not because it was trash, but for lack of mental stamina to just keep going forward. Though no one around me realized it, life was really hard then. I was tired, discouraged, and seriously wanted to give up.

So when a cast member’s mom told me that day how good my show was, it was God’s timing. She said she had read the script the night before and thought it was powerful. Then she relayed how her daughter had taken one of my songs to her voice teacher, and the teacher ended up in tears by the end of the song.

I’m assuming the tears meant she was moved and not because she was hoping my lousy song would end soon. (Insert awkward smiley face here!)

What this mom didn’t know is I’d just had a terrible week, with several discouraging things happening one after the other. Our family was in the process of moving to East TN, and obstacles to finishing the show weee piling uo around me. So when she said these nice things to me, it was at a moment where despite all the time invested in the show and the quality of the work, I was about to give up and walk away.

I’m sure my depression would have come as a surprise to her, but it is a common part of being a creative guy. People think because you have certain gifts or abilities, you know “how good you are” (their words, not mine). But most creative people are dogged by crippling self-doubt.

And by the way, even me mentioning my gifts in that last sentence immediately opens me up for criticism. For talented people, even acknowledging your abilities can be seen as a sign of a huge ego.

So people don’t bother to encourage you, because they don’t think you need it. In fact, sometimes they are brutal, and say things they never would say to anyone else. They may even envy the gifts you have, thinking you are so much more confident in them than you really are, so they feel no guilt in taking shots at you. After all, you have so much going for you, right?

Over the years, I’ve worked with lots of talented people. You’d think when someone is greatly gifted, they’ve got it made. Often, the opposite is true. Talented people are often just as resented as they are admired for their gifts. As a result, some of the most talented people I’ve known have also been the most emotionally troubled. Many are never comfortable in their own skin because of the negative attention their gifts bring.

“A man’s gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men” – Proverbs 18:16 is true, but it has a catch that few people understand. Talent gives you great opportunities, but it also gives you terrifying obstacles. For every person who wants to herald your talent, there will be three who feel threatened by it. I’ve seen several friendships destroyed simply because one friend couldn’t resist comparing their talents to the other friend.

And while talents do open doors for you, doors can also get locked behind you. Often people who want to harness your gifts for their goals end up limiting you out of fear you’ll outshine them or gain too much influence. So you find yourself being allowed to use only a fraction of what you do.

“Shine, baby, shine! Um…but just not too much”.

All I’ve written here is just to say this:

ALWAYS ENCOURAGE PEOPLE, EVEN IF YOU THINK THEY DON’T NEED IT. Because, trust me, they do!

No matter how smart you think they are.

No matter how they seem to have “got it made”.

And if you have an opinion about something you think they could be doing better, consider keeping it to yourself unless they ask you for it. Because people are never as strong as you think they are, and the very things that bring them attention also make them a target.

Boy, do we love to criticize and knock down other people’s sandcastles! We think it makes us look so smart when we point out other’s shortcomings. We make sport of poking holes in someone else’s boat, and laugh while they go under. Schadenfreude is made even sweeter when the other person has gifts we don’t.

But conversely, when you’ve got something encouraging to say but don’t think that person really need to hear it, say it anyway. Something beautiful might end up being stillborn without you breathing a little life back into it.

This is coming home to me today because that show that I almost gave up on to just focus on moving my family out of state, that I was so unsure of…well, it just got nominated for a major award. Someone considers it to be one of the three best plays of 2024. But in my insecurity and struggle, I almost walked away from the performance that was videotaped and eventually sent in to that international arts festival.

Heather Weiss Dockweiler, if you’re reading this, thank you for saving my show. If you hadn’t told me what it meant to you that day and how moved you were by it, it probably would’ve never happened. Something really beautiful that’s bringing joy to people now would have been stopped before being birthed. You probably didn’t think what you said mattered much. But boy, did it ever!

So what words do you have that might save something beautiful today? Who knows, they might even save someone’s life.

Wouldn’t you rather say those words than all the other critical things you could say? Even though tearing people down is so much fun for us all?

“The power of life and death is in the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). No matter how little talent or ability you think you have, you have the ability to lift up and empower someone… or to completely destroy them.

It’s your choice. It’s all up to you.

Take every opportunity to encourage people, especially the ones you don’t think need it. Because kind words are the fuel God uses to creates beautiful things.