I spend my days listening, reading and mediating dialogues: my work involves listening and speaking. I have long observed, and lived, the impacts of thoughtless speech. Depending on the people involved, the context and the topic, words are efficient scalpels that cut deep into the soul. So deep that, at times, healing is slow or does not happen.

In many cases, words externalize the speaker’s troubled inner world, expelled as an outsourcing of painful or uncomfortable thoughts. In others, without knowing a millimeter past the interlocutor’s nose, the speaker judges, condemns and executes with the ease of a co-owner of the truth.

The resulting trail of blood and viscera is solemnly ignored because, returning to his inner world, the speaker savors the seconds of pleasure of a Pyrrhic victory.

His instant victory digs a moat around him that few people, almost always his equals, dare to cross.

Knowing this, and aware that “it will take us to heaven but first drag us through the cellars of hell,” I have increasingly postponed or even canceled my speaking. I perceive greater power in dialogic fields when speaking is interspersed with thinking silences. I try, and when appropriate offer, the suggestion of a quick sequence of thoughts, with a double function: organizing the tumult of the mental condominium and guiding the choice of words, interlocutor, occasion and reason for being.

In up to twenty seconds, I can put together a small decision tree that begins with a not-so-simple question: is what I want to say true? Is my truth biased by the contents of my frame of reference? Is it a factual truth? Around here, much of what makes its way to the vocal apparatus quickly goes back to its source... a good topic for mental-condominium meetings. Silence wins.

Once the act of speaking is decided, it is good to think about whether the truth is useful or inspiring for that specific interlocutor (or group of interlocutors), whether it takes the other into account, whether it is attuned to the other’s world of meanings. Here I think of strategic intelligence: if I want to be heard, tuning in to the listener is the least I can do to feed self-respect.

Looking around is the next branch of my decision tree: is this the moment? Is this the place? Is the environment favorable? Is the other’s dignity (and mine) protected from untimely eyes and ears? It is important not to make my speech an invitation to triangulations or interpretations, roots that feed toxicity and begin their evolution before a casual audience. This reflection, extended to social media posts, can lead us to deep considerations about impacts and complex sequences of sick dialogues.

And, in the second before the speech that is true, useful, well addressed, timely, opportune and protected, one last decision is needed: whatever it is, I will speak with kindness. Kindness is the last station of this sequence of deliberations.

Kindness is an umbrella that shelters deliberate amiability, respect, care, appreciation and validation of the interlocutor.

Many times I am asked whether these precautions should be taken all the time with all people. I answer that I believe in a “training” of our brain, done little by little, which also little by little gives us the extraordinary freedom of choice. Without thinking, our speech carries along aspects that belong exclusively to the inner dialogue; calibrating that dialogue is the collateral gain of attuned speaking.

Converting scalpel words into bridge words does not mean omission or evasion of responsibilities, whatever they may be. It is choosing symmetrical dialogics, choosing not to hurt, choosing to leave memories and not scars.

In dialogue with children, teams, loves, friends, family, thinking for twenty seconds can be a little brick in building the health of encounters. The challenge is to try. I can say that navigating gentle fluency brought into my life people who do not fear deep, true contact. We talk deeply and stuff our being present with long silences.