“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” I remember chanting this in elementary school after a fifth grader was picking on me while I was in fourth grade. I can still picture where I was on the playground at my elementary school when this kid was making fun of my last name. While I haven’t thought about this episode in my life for quite a while, it suddenly came back to me over the weekend after news broke of the four Israeli hostages having been rescued.

Like many of you, I tried to see and read everything I could about the rescue mission. One of many online posts I saw stuck out more than the others. It referenced how the news of the rescue was being reported. Apparently, some of the news stories or posts referred to the hostages being “released” by Hamas.

Think about this for a moment. This depiction paints a very different picture than what actually took place. The IDF, following several weeks of planning and coordination, conducted a military exercise to extract and rescue the hostages from their captors.

I bring this up because this is an example for all of us to remember… words have power, especially in how they are used and conveyed. Sadly, I believe that we sometimes forget this fundamental idea… the power words have. It’s a power that can shape perspective and opinions and often is used to portray a specific angle to tell a story.

I am unsure when people began to focus more on selling their “perspective” than providing a clear, direct, unbiased presentation of facts. Unfortunately, this is the culture in which we live today, whether it is because of TV news ratings or online click rates. Now, as consumers, it is up to us to make sure we recognize when this is happening, try to come to our own conclusions based on truth, and use common sense.

Look… I believe there is a place for wordsmithing… heck… I do it every week right here in my weekly column. Trying to frame a message that elicits an emotion or a response is a potent tool many people use on all sides of issues. It goes back to the fact that we need to be responsible for how we use our words because of the emotions they can elicit.

We are living in a very polarized time in our world’s history. The way we can get through it and hopefully make things a little bit better is to do what we can, each of us, not to exacerbate an issue by using words irresponsibly. After all, we can reference plenty of examples of people not acting responsibly with the words they have used.

We must keep this idea in mind and hope that collectively, we can slowly bring about a change.