Category: Words To Live By

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

There are times I struggle with what to write in this blog. As of this posting, I have done this for 112 days consecutively. On each of those days, I have woken up and had the thought cross my mind at least once what I should talk about in writing for that day. What began as an urging from one of my spiritual teachers, blogging daily has become something much greater for me than just writing about random thoughts or opinions.

Often I wonder if there is anyone perusing any of what I am writing. To date, I haven’t had a single comment from anyone on any of these entires. The spiritual teacher who first recommended I do this has told me to just keep writing and trusting that it’s helping both me and others. So on each and every day, I have one single goal for what I write in my blog. My only intention is to be an inspiration for someone in their own journey of finding healing, hope, and God.

Writing hasn’t always been a passion of mine though. For the longest time, I was unaware I was even able to write anything. I was often recommended by therapists that I was seeing to journal as they would indicate it would be healthy and healing for me. I never quite enjoyed doing that task because what I wrote was just an endless stream of thoughts passing through my brain, none of which were probably organized enough to have anyone be interested in reading them. The first time I ever picked up writing for a purpose beyond journaling was in 2005 when I had just completed a ten day silent retreat in the mountains of Virginia. A friend had recommended that I chronicle the experience in words from the beginning to the end. I took her up on that recommendation and upon completion, I shared with her the results as well as with a few others, one of which was a reporter who wrote articles for a local newspaper who I had met in passing. Interestingly enough, this reporter liked what I had written and asked me to summarize the experience in less than 1000 words. He wanted to share it with his editor for possible submission. A few weeks later, I saw my first article get printed in a column in this local newspaper and the rest was history.

I wrote regularly for about two years after that. I submitted articles monthly for several local newspapers under the tagline of Words To Live By. I was grateful to have gained the experience but even more grateful for the few people that had gotten in contact with me after being inspired by what I had written. Their inspiration had even inspired me to work on and complete my first fiction based novel which fits in the kids to young adult fantasy genre. Unfortunately, my addictions got the best of me beginning around 2007 and I drifted away from writing anything at all for the next six years. That was until January of this year, when I finally garnered enough courage to take that spiritual teacher’s advice and begin writing again.

I’m not sure where writing is going to take me this time around. I have hopes and dreams with it like anyone might in my shoes. But on most days, I just keep on writing with one purpose, to get back into the practice of what I once did with great passion and joy, which was my desire to spread hope and love on this planet. This planet needs a lot more of that and as my hands type these words, I feel somehow that at least I’m doing more of the work that I believe God sent me here to do and less on how I’ve spent most of my life where I was running from it. I’m grateful to God for this gift and for those who may find any hope and healing in what it is I continue to write.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Things aren’t always what they seem like from the outside looking in. I made mention to this briefly in yesterday’s posting but felt it might be best to elaborate on this a little more. Because of my own experiences of what I’m going through with chronic pain, I’ve come come to understand that I shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover anymore. And for a long time I did.

Growing up in a family that was judgmental often, it was easy for me to become that way too. As I grew older and became more active in many types of addictions that consumed my life, my judgments of what my eyes were seeing around me also grew. If I saw a person driving recklessly on the road, I swore profusely at them and called the driver many awful names. If I passed by someone begging on the streets with a cardboard sign and a cup, I would avoid them and think they just need to get a job. If I watched someone cutting in a line I was waiting in, I would get quite angry and vocal about it as I thought what makes them so special. If I observed a person parking in a handicap spot somewhere, I would think they were cheating the system if I saw them get out and not have any visible signs of disability. And so on and so forth.

My whole perception of this with people and life changed dramatically though three years ago when all of this pain started and my own little world of judgments that I had created began to cave in. I found myself doing much of the things that I had judged others doing for years. I drove recklessly out of anger from what I was feeling in my body. I wasn’t able to work and started asking others to help out with paying for things I was still partaking in. I cut in lines because it was too painful to stand for any length of time. I parked in handicapped spots on days when the pain was too unbearable to walk very far.

Life turned into an endless stream of me limping around, acting like a gloomy Gus, and making sure everyone knew I was hurting and disabled. As time has passed since then, I have grown stronger in my ability to conceal the pain. This world has a lot of misery in it, and I decided as time passed with the pain I was enduring, that I needed to do my best to not add any more to it. Unfortunately, that also brought about the same behaviors happening to me that I once did to others.

A few weeks ago when I was at the airport getting ready for a flight, I went to the counter to ask for an early boarding slip because of the difficulties I have in standing for any period. The man at the counter looked me up and down and I could feel he was judging me as I once judged others. He then asked me what my disability was and gave me a look like I was making it up when I told him. Several months back I went to a movie screening and while I was waiting in line, I asked for a chair to sit in for the same reason I asked to pre-board that plane early. A short time after siting down on the chair that was brought to me, a theater employee told me he was going to need the chair I was sitting on. I responded that I needed it because of my own inability to stand for long periods and he looked at me and said it didn’t look like I had any disability and walked away irritated. Sadly, both of those people judging me for what they saw was what I did for many, many years.

Because of what I’ve learned in all of this, my compassion has grown for all people today. These judgments I once spewed out of my mouth have grown less and less. And I’ve been able to see things with a completely different set of eyes. When I see a person now driving recklessly, or begging, or cutting in line, or parking in a handicapped spot when they don’t look handicapped, I remind myself that I don’t know their story and I don’t know them. Maybe that reckless driver is heading to the hospital to see someone close to them who is in dire straits. Maybe that person begging has just lost their job, has two young kids to feed on their own, and the money from unemployment isn’t enough. Maybe that person cutting in line has someone waiting for them out in the car that is abusive and they are afraid of being beaten down in some way if they don’t hurry up. Maybe that person parking in the handicapped spot is just like me, concealing their pain so as not to draw attention but secretly cringing with every step they take. Sure, I could look at each of these incidents on the negative side thinking they are cheating some system, and say what I used to, but I choose to look at them now with compassion instead. It has made me a lot less angry and irritable based person.

The bottom line in all of what I’m saying is pretty simple. As much as I was angry at God for a long time about all of this pain, I am realizing now that it’s been a gift because it’s helped me to see things so differently that once irritated me and brought out a lot of judgments. When I see something today that sets off those parts of my brain which once lead me to judging any book by its cover, I am able to create a completely different story. One that has compassion. One that has patience. And one that is filled with God’s love for all people and all things no matter what their cover may look like.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson