Sometimes our words have more impact than we may ever know. A word of encouragement may stick much longer than we expect.
I was reminded of this when Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson answered a question during her “interview” for Supreme Court Justice. She spoke about how she was feeling years ago in her first semester at Harvard. It was a very different world from what she’d experienced in her public high school in Miami. She was homesick, questioning herself whether she belonged there, wondering if she could make it, as she walked across Harvard Yard. Someone she did not know, noticing her internal quandary, made eye contact as they passed each other and leaned in to say one word, “Persevere.”
That simple, sincere outreach by a stranger, that one word, made a huge impact on Ketanji’s mindset. And clearly has stuck with her all these years later.
Words have power. You know it and I know it. What is something someone said to you that stuck and made a difference for you?
