It happens all the time. People pick on people. Jokes are made at other people’s expenses. Individuals are bullied incessantly. Does anyone really see the cost of this in our world today?
It’s there in the newspapers, the internet, in magazines, in books, and on the television more and more these days. Another suicide, another murder rampage, or another violent attack has happened with someone ranging from a young kid to an older adult. Many of these terrible tragedies are eventually then connected back to being bullied, picked on, or abused by someone else.
I know all about what it feels like to be bullied and picked on.
It’s happened for most of my life.
Sadly, I was one of those kids growing up that was both picked on constantly at school and mentally and emotionally abused by my family as well. I’m not sure which was worse. In my grammar school years, kids just cited me out as an easy target. My books were knocked out of my hands often in the hallways. I was pushed and shoved into lockers, spit on, punched, given wedgies and terrible nicknames, and a whole lot more. At home, with alcoholic parents, my sister and I were easy targets for our parents addiction based drama with the results often being grounded or punished for things we shouldn’t have been.
By the age of 16, I felt it would be easier to die and was thinking about suicide more than not. There were many occasions too that I secretly wished I could hurt these bullies and my parents by making them suffer like I was from each of them. Thankfully, I never did either but as my years passed by, I seemed to become a magnet for being ridiculed and made fun of. In many of my places of employment or things I took part in socially, I was the pawn of other’s jokes for how they felt I looked or what I wore or how I acted. In the relationships I got into, it was no better, and often I was the butt of partner’s and friend’s jokes.
I believe there is only one reason why anyone picks on, makes fun of, or torments anyone else.
While many human beings may deny this, fear and insecurity are pretty rampant within every individual. What’s the best way to take the attention off of one’s own fears and insecurities? By distracting everyone else from seeing them by shifting the attention and focus onto someone else’s. I know this pattern because I’m guilty of it as well. For as much as I was picked on, occasionally over the years, I found someone more insecure then myself to do those same behaviors towards and I saw the results. I watched people close to me that were the pawn of my own jokes and bullying behaviors cry profusely. I’ve seen them shut down for days and weeks because of my own nastiness.
With all the work I’ve been doing to clean my act up, get closer to God, and do God’s will, I don’t like making fun of anyone anymore. I know the damage it causes now. I’m grateful it didn’t result in a serious tragedy either to myself or anyone else. I know for others, they can’t say the same. Some are dead and some are in jail because of it.
I’ve heard so many times in my life that “I shouldn’t take jokes so seriously…” I’ve heard quite often as well that I just seem like an easy target for it and I should just roll with the punches. Tell that to all those people who haven’t been able to handle it like I have and have killed themselves or others because they were picked on one too many times. Unfortunately, much of this type of behavior gets transferred down through many generations in families. Parents bully their kids who then bully other kids to deal with the pain from home and then grow up to be bullies to their own kids as well. The buck has to stop somewhere.
In the past year of my life I’ve seen things so much more clearly. I seek God to help me move beyond this craziness and am trying to heal myself so that I can get out into the world one day soon and help begin to heal others who are still suffering from this madness.
To put it bluntly, being bullied, picked on, made fun of, ridiculed, or abused sucks. It hurts not only the person receiving it, but it does damage to one’s own soul who is doing the behaviors themselves. I have separated myself from many people today because I don’t deserve to be bullied nor do I want to be around anyone who does that type of behavior. And I don’t make fun of anyone anymore at their expense because when I have slipped and gone back into an old behavior like that, I feel the pain in my own heart of how that other person feels from receiving my own poison.
The bottom line is that it’s not cool to put down other people to try to lift up ourselves. It’s not cool to put shadows over someone else’s fears and insecurities when we have so many of our own to still work on. We can prevent much of what is happening in our world today if we can just start working more on releasing our own inner demons in a healthy way that doesn’t hurt anyone else. And maybe then, we won’t make fun of or pick on anyone else, and instead we will just offer them love.
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson
