The Wind Does Not Take Away The Words

It’s true that our memory makes mistakes, but there’s a long way to go from there to say it doesn’t exist. A path that is not without importance and that at times is fertile ground for those who want to get rid of the commitments they have acquired. Thanks to these opportunists, the expression that the wind takes the words became popular.

This metaphor at bottom says that what is pronounced and not written and signed has a lighter weight than a deciduous and yellowish leaf, the kind that falls from trees in autumn. Maybe on a legal level it’s like that, but on a personal level it’s far from working that way.

Will you fulfill your commitment?

As we said at the beginning, we have a memory that slips, but it is memory in the end. It is in it that the personal commitments that we have made and those that others make with us are engraved. When a sister commits to picking up the children, she does not sign any legal documents to confirm this, she simply says she will attend. She gives her word, which initials her identity.

Thus, she herself adheres to her word. Something that in theory in human relationships should weigh more than a scribble in the form of a signature. On the other hand, we will cling to that word according to the number of times it has fulfilled its promises in the past, and we will especially consider those that entailed a similar cost to the person who gave us their word.

That is, if we know that this sister this afternoon had no plans and are not likely to arise, let’s try to find situations where she has made a similar commitment. Once the memories are located, we will use them to estimate whether or not she will keep her word.

On the other hand, if she lives far away and we know that this afternoon she has an activity she likes that could interfere with her schedule, we’ll resort to memories in which she made a costly commitment. In this way, we will also use them to estimate whether you will or will not comply.

For this estimate, we will also evaluate other factors, such as possible motivations for taking on this commitment. Perhaps she loves children and sees the moments she spends with her nephews as moments of pleasure and delight. This will undoubtedly lower the estimated cost, if any. On the contrary, it will increase it if she doesn’t like the company of her nephews and the activity seems to be a burden.

Finally, it is worth saying that the increase in cost does not necessarily have to increase the chances that someone will not keep their word. There are certain people who, for different reasons, as if they wanted to be generous, can respond to high-cost commitments and not do so in front of those who have a low cost.

The words that hurt, the words that give strength

There is another type of word that the wind hardly takes from our memory, and they are the ones that people told us that we appreciate them and that they caused us a lot of pain. We might think they said them in a moment of frustration and then realize they didn’t feel quite that way, but it’s not that easy to erase them from your memory, it’s not like the wind that can blow away a slowly falling leaf from a tree.

The problem is that these words were registered with a deep emotional imprint, and our memory does not usually forget what causes deep imprints. There is an exception: that the fact overcomes our capacity for emotional assimilation and hides the memory with dissociative amnesia.

However, even with this type of amnesia, the person could have feelings of rejection towards the person who hurt them even if they cannot explain why. In this way, the words we pronounce are not innocuous elements thrown into the air written with an easy-to-erase pencil. On the contrary, they are elements of influence that can never be erased.

Finally, it is worth pointing out one last important fact, although this is a theme that would cover an entire book. The words we receive leave marks on us, but the words we speak do too. Just as we speak of the deep wound from the words heard, the ones we say can also leave us with very intense feelings, such as guilt (from a negative point of view) and pride (from a positive point of view). So no, the wind doesn’t carry the words. Some not even a hurricane.