Words: beautiful, kind, and unkind

When he was about my age, my father used to say that the most beautiful words in the English language are “come back in three months,” at least when he heard them from a doctor. When you reach our stage of development, you no longer take it for granted that you’ll still be around.

But those aren’t the only beautiful words. “I love you” is perhaps the most beautiful, and “come back in three months” the next most beautiful, at least for people of my age. But a close runner-up to these is “you’re right.” As Laura Belgray writes in a recent blog post (www.talkingshrimp.com), it may be painful to admit you’re wrong, but it costs nothing to say “you’re right,” and it makes the person you’re talking to feel good.

Almost as good as “you’re right” is “perhaps you’re right.” My mother taught me the usefulness of that expression. Not only does it end a fruitless argument, it pleases the other person, because you’ve shown that you’ve listened. Besides, maybe the other person is right or partly right. There’s usually something positive to be said for the other’s point of view, even if you don’t agree with it.

If “I love you,” “you’re right,” and “perhaps you’re right” are pleasant to hear, “you’re wrong” strikes the American ear as unnecessarily harsh. But that’s in America. In Israel, as the linguist Eddie Levenston pointed out, saying in Hebrew the equivalent of “you’re wrong” is not thought to be overly abrupt at all. Israelis are dugri, a term they've borrowed from Arabic, which is to say that they're uncompromisingly frank and direct. So Israelis view the American practice of saying something like “are you sure?” in place of “you’re wrong,” as wishy-washy.

“The kindest words I’ll ever know are waiting to be said,” wrote Richard Rogers for the musical No Strings (1967). What are the kindest words? When your wife has fallen in love with her new dress and asks you if you like it, what do you say if you don't? My grandfather, when faced with that question, would say “I’m no judge,” but that’s the same as saying “no.” I suppose you could say, “now that’s a dress!” (This technique works well when proud parents show off their ugly infant. You can say, with perfect truth, “now that’s a baby!”). The kindest response to your wife’s question, since after all she’s already bought the dress, is to say that you like it.

Kindness calls for tact. At the conclusion of a freighter voyage across the Pacific, where I was the only passenger, I told the Head Engineer that I’d like to treat the officers to wine before our last dinner. That tactful soul didn’t make me feel bad by saying that this was not such a good idea. Instead, he said, “even better would be to pick up the tab for their drinks before dinner.” He was right, since in this way everyone could have what he wanted, but he implied that my original idea was good.

The kindest words, of course, depend on the context. But the unkindest words of all are clear. Unfortunately they're as hard to repress as it is cruel when you don’t, but you must repress them at all costs. Those awful words? “I told you so.” Sometimes it's kindest to say nothing at all.