A few months ago someone that I cared about passed away. You may all remember her and probably saw something about it on social media. Her name is Jessica Ainscough. A day or two after she passed away, I wrote a blog post sharing my insights and perspective on her passing and it was met with quite a lot of criticism. For an entire day, I was slammed on Twitter by several Doctors and specialists in the medical faculty and it really affected me. Normally, I can handle quite a lot of confrontation and conflict but on that day, I crumbled a little bit. It hurt and I let them beat me.
Since that day and possibly also due to an accumulation of other situations like this in my past, I made a decision to be less controversial and to not state my opinions or views on topics that could be quite sensitive to the general public. I’ve held myself back and stopped myself from being who I am – someone who stands by his morals and principles, even if other people don’t agree with it.
So today, I am stepping out of my comfort zone and I am going to make another controversial statement. I spent some time yesterday trying to understand why I had such an issue with the word bully. I could list all the negative reasons for it, that validated my feelings but I had trouble figuring out what the upsides were of the word and even the whole concept. I knew that I didn’t want to be aligned with a global movement that wants to eliminate it, stop it or remove it from the planet so I’ve been avoiding doing anything within that space. That was until I realised what bullies actually are and what I want to do within that space to change the way the world perceives this issue.
Bullies are the change makers for humanity.
They are people, just like you and me, who push for change on the planet and by the way, we’ve all been bullies in our lives. No one is exempt from being one. We have pushed people, challenged people, confronted people, teased people or animals, been authoritative over others and even hurt people. Every time we have taken that action or others have taken that action towards us, there has been a single unconscious or divine motivation for it and that is to help create change and to create progress.
I was bullied most of my life so it stands to reason that I would be against people who bully others but the truth is, I’m not. In fact, I am an advocate for the bully, not the other way around. It’s easy to play the victim in life. I should know. I’ve done it quite a lot but it is not easy standing in the role of bully. We get criticised for it, condemned for it and even punished for it. In what way does that ever serve a purpose? In my mind, I can’t work it out. As a result, I’m behind the bully and there are a number of reasons why. People who challenge others will do it for a number of reasons and until we are humble enough to see this, the cycle of bullying, in its current form, will continue to permeate through society for years to come.
People who bully others, in the simplest terms possible, perceive they are not getting their needs met, so what they do is push the boundaries of society in order to gain the recognition, validation and praise that they feel they deserve. They also often feel inferior and insignificant and will do whatever they can, sometimes in extremes, to humble the people around them who come across as superior so they can be seen and appreciated for who they are. They are also there to push people, who see themselves as weak, to stand up for themselves and take ownership of who they are, what they believe and what’s important to them. In truth, every time I’ve picked on someone, pushed someone or confronted someone, I did it for those reasons and those alone. I wanted to be valued and appreciated for who I am but I also wanted the other person to grow into themselves and be powerful in their own life.
It’s time we stopped trying to get rid of things we are scared of and take some time to start understanding them instead. This world is full of enough disharmony and disarray and in my opinion, it’s because we don’t take the time to understand our fellow human beings. We act superior, think we’re better, judge people and then proceed to condemn them and label them everything negative under the sun. The media does this and our governments do this and both of them feed their agenda to us in order to perpetuate this cycle purely for financial gain and while this is happening, kids are dying from gun violence in America, drug and alcohol use is going up and suicide rates are increasingly getting worse.
If there is one thing I want you to get out of this blog post today, it’s that you start asking people who challenge you if they’re ok or if they need to talk or if there’s anything that you can do to help them out. Let them know that you care about them instead of putting them down for trying to be seen and heard for who they are and see them as vehicles for change in your life because maybe, just maybe, they’re trying to help you be everything you wished you could be. Have a think about that one.
