Words are seeds. Be careful what you’re planting in the people you talk about.

Whatever you say about a person keeps growing after the conversation ends. The listener carries it into their next encounter with that person, some version usually gets back to them eventually, and the thing you planted in three seconds is still in the ground months later. Words about people are rarely neutral. They shape how a whole group sees somebody before that somebody has said anything.

Before passing something along, ask what it will look like in that person’s life in a month. Say one specific good thing about somebody out loud this week while they are not there. That plants too, and it grows the same way.