Response over Reaction

I, myself, can barely tell which is which between these two words that are commonly mistaken as one. The best way I can describe it is through facebook messenger.

Have you ever received a chat message and reacted HAHA because it's funny or ANGRY FACE because it's offensive? How about leaning your back into the chair, letting the message sink in and constructing what you want to reply? Then, that's about it. That's how reacting differs from responding.

Reacting to something is often driven by our principles and what we believe in. We react according to what we think is right or wrong. Responding, on the other hand is when we take time to understand something and choose not to rely only on what we think about it.

We react more often than respond. The thing is, when we react to something, it happens in an instance which sometimes makes it regrettable. Some reactions are irreversible too. When we react more than we respond, it shows how little power and control we've got over ourselves.

When we learn the right way of responding, we would realize how satisfying it is to not be carried away by our emotions. We would understand that there's something fulfilling in knowing how to control ourselves and how to understand where someone is coming from.

We gotta start practicing response over reaction, because unlike messenger, we cannot take back and unsend the way we react to someone in real life. And sometimes, one wrong reaction could ruin and change something in a blink of an eye.