قبل از آنکه سنگ برداریم، مکث کنیم

For years, we have laughed with certain people. Their voices, their presence, their jokes, and the memories they left with us made some of our days lighter. Some people are not merely faces; they become part of our collective memory. Part of tired evenings, restless nights, and the days when we needed something to ease the pressure of life.

And yet, sometimes only a few lines are enough to turn everything around. A few unsupported lines. A few incomplete sentences. A post, a story, a screenshot, a ‘people say’, an ‘I heard’, a ‘there must be something to it’.

Then suddenly everyone arrives. The judges. The investigators. The self-appointed experts on morality. And finally, the executioners who seem to enjoy nothing more than carrying out the sentence.

Destroying a person has become frighteningly easy.

Sometimes we think this is a new behavior created by social media. Look a little closer, though, and it is not new at all. We are simply living through the modern form of an old disease: rumor. An inheritance passed from one generation to the next. The same bitter habit that once traveled in whispers now hides behind hashtags, stories, and channels.

Only the tools have changed. The underlying story has not.

There was a time when people in small gatherings would say, ‘Have you heard what they are saying about so-and-so?’ Today the same sentence wears new clothes: ‘It is all over social media that…’

There is not much difference. In both cases, truth is not the first victim. Reputation is.

And reputation is not a small thing.

Reputation is not merely a name. It is not merely social status or what other people think of someone. It is a person’s psychological safety, dignity, and the result of years spent living, working, enduring, making mistakes, building, falling, and getting back up.

We often fail to notice that when we mindlessly join a wave of judgment, we are not merely discussing a piece of news. We are stepping on a human life.

The problem begins when collective excitement replaces reason. At that point, almost nobody is looking for truth anymore. Everyone is looking for a role in the spectacle. One person wants to be first to spread the story. Another wants the harshest position. Someone wants to appear more moral than everyone else. Someone wants attention from the fire. And someone else simply does not feel like thinking and follows the crowd.

This is exactly where being human becomes difficult. Because being human means that at the very moment everyone else is running, you choose to pause.

Pausing is not easy. Often it is harder than judging. Immediate judgment gives us a sense of power. It makes us feel that we understand, that we know, that we have seen behind the curtain. Pausing means admitting that perhaps we do not know enough yet. It means accepting that knowing is different from hearing. It means accepting that truth does not always reveal itself at the speed we demand.

We need to relearn something very simple: if there has been wrongdoing, if there has been a crime, if there is a truth to uncover, the place for that truth to be established is a court of law, not the excitement of a crowd.

Evidence should deliver the verdict, not the wave.

Choosing not to judge does not mean we are naive or blindly defending someone. Refusing premature judgment is a form of intellectual maturity. It means we do not allow fragments of incomplete information to become a final sentence against another human being.

Many people misunderstand this. They assume we must either condemn immediately or defend immediately. There is a third path, and to me it is the most human one: wait for the truth to become clear.

Do not pick up the stone. Do not cheer either. Just wait until the truth has a chance to show itself.

These days, perhaps what hurts us most is the lack of that patience. Everything has become fast. News arrives quickly. Analysis is manufactured quickly. The verdict is issued quickly. Truth, however, is rarely that fast. Sometimes truth needs time. It needs investigation. It needs evidence. And above all, it needs an awake conscience.

With collective rage, we create far more destruction than justice. We destroy trust. We destroy safety. We destroy people’s dignity. And worst of all, we damage ourselves.

Because every time we mindlessly join a wave, we leave a small piece of our humanity behind.

People do not become monsters all at once. No one does. We slowly get used to things. We get used to watching, talking, judging, and participating in the destruction of other people’s reputations. That habit is what makes the process dangerous.

A society does not become cruel overnight. It begins in moments like these: when we pass around an incomplete story; when we fail to ask ourselves, ‘What if one day it is my turn?’

What if one day a few incomplete lines are published about me? What if people sentence me before I have a chance to explain? What if a reputation I spent years building becomes a toy for the excitement of an impatient crowd?

Perhaps if we asked ourselves that question each time, we would pick up fewer stones.

I think, more than ever, we need to return to one simple thing: the pause.

Pause before reposting. Pause before judging. Pause before taking a position. Pause before throwing another piece of wood into the fire of a rumor.

This pause is not a defense of wrongdoing. It is not blind loyalty. It is not weakness. It is simply respect for truth, respect for a human being, and respect for dignity.

And perhaps most importantly, respect for ourselves.

Because we are not defined only by the words we say. We are also defined by the moments when we could have joined the line of judgment, but chose instead to remain human.

Just once, before we pick up the stone, let us pause. Not only for the person standing in the middle of the square today, but for ourselves. So that we do not become like the generations that shaped and burned people’s lives with ‘they say’ and ‘I heard’.

History remembers some generations with a single sentence: ‘They built with rumor, and they burned with rumor.’

I hope we are not one of those generations.