If You Wouldn't Write It and Sign It, Don't Say It. --Earl Wilson

So Yom Kippur is done and over with and a brand new year lies ahead of us. The slate has been wiped clean and we find ourselves once again trying to keep it clean.

I came across this next story and thought it was a good lesson to start off.

More than all the good I hope to accomplish this upcoming year I feel very strongly about working on some things I should refrain from doing. As someone who loves to talk (maybe a little bit too much at times) I often don’t realize just how much of what I say can be idle talk or G-d forbid harmful talk.

There once was a little girl who could not control her bad temper. So, her mother gave her a bag of nails and told her that every time she lost her temper, she must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.

The first day the girl had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as she learned to control her anger, the number of nails she hammered daily gradually dwindled down. She discovered it was easier to hold her temper than to drive those nails into the fence.

Finally the day came when the girl didn't lose her temper at all. She told her mother about this and her mother suggested that now she pull out one nail for each day that she was able to hold her temper. The days passed and the young girl was finally able to tell her mother that all the nails were gone. The mother then took her daughter by the hand and led her to the fence.

She said, "You have done well, my daughter, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one." 

You can stick a knife into a person and draw it out. It won't matter how many times you say "I'm sorry," the wound is still there. A verbal wound can be as bad as a physical one.

Your friends are rare jewels indeed. They will make you smile and laugh, and encourage you to succeed or dissuade you from doing wrong. They lend an ear, they share words of praise and they always want to open their hearts. So, cherish your friends, and beware of moments when anger or the wrong choice of words may cut deeper than a knife.

Here's to a year where I really, truly think twice before I say something.

The kindest word in all the world is the unkind word, unsaid.