Excellent insight and advice, Bob. Ego is far too often our worst enemy and it is no coincidence that so many permutations of the Eastern philosophies (such as Buddhism and Taoism, et al) focus so inordinately on release of ego as a key to gaining harmony.

Your observations on the harmful effects of words used as virtual weapons also resonate. I am reminded of the ancient Hawai'ian oral traditions (prior to the coming of the Christian missionaries there was no written Hawai'ian language...one of the few excellent things they did for the indigenous Hawai'ians) and their admonishments regarding words...reflective of much the same sentiment as your own, expressed here.

Words were felt by those ancients to have great 'mana' (spiritual power) and the belief was also that that mana was potentially lethal (especially when practiced by the priestly Kahuna ‘Anā’anā on the island on Moloka'i, whose verbal prayer could reputedly kill a person). We too often fail to recognise that a string of angry words, while releasing toxins and poisons that are equally hurtful to us if allowed to fester unexpiated, can have an even more devastating effect on the 'other' they are released on.

It takes a whopping lot of mature integrity and self-knowledge to use words appropriately so as to be harmful neither to ourselves or to others. After all, as you sagely observe, time is a great healer and the passage of time tends to take the edges off of most of our self-generated sources of personal angst. Thanks for sharing these insights with us, Bob!