I used to be really interested in the news, you know. I read the newspaper, made sure to watch the noon, 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. reports, could hold a conversation about prominent issues in my community, country, and in the world. Looking back, I can see how upset I’d get over things I had no control over. Angry. In tears. I came to know the world is not the fair and reasonable place I’d imagined as a child. It finally got to the point where I turned it all off and watched soap operas. At least then the drama, although manufactured and often poorly acted, was honest, because it did not claim to be true.
I find myself looking at something like Facebook with dismay. I suppose it’s great that we can all be connected in these different ways, posting the mundane and extraordinary with equal zeal. But the attitudes displayed between people who hold differing opinions concerns me. If we can’t even have a civil discourse, inviting our friends to express their views without attacking them and vice versa, how will we ever find peace in the world? And how can we be so narrow-minded to think that if that person there does something hurtful, everyone else that looks or believes the same must be tainted?
I shouldn’t be surprised I suppose. I was the outcast in grade eight who ate her lunch in the stairwell with two other outcasts, afraid to go out into the school grounds. I do not remember being treated kindly by anyone other than a couple teachers and fellow scapegoats. Once I was targeted by one, I became the target of all. I hated ‘Lord of the Flies’ because I knew what it was like to be the powerless one. I was bitter about that for many years. Much later I came to know that this was now called bullying and schools were working to remove it. I never really told my parents or siblings what was happening to me. I just almost failed the year, as I recall. I think by then, somewhere deep inside, I felt I must deserved it. I was told often enough I didn’t measure up. You tend to start believing what you are told. Those voices travel with you through life and gladly will advise you on a daily basis that you suck.
That’s how someone becomes programmed to be acquiescent. You think that if you can please others by doing what they want and thinking what they think and being who you think they think you should be, then they will like you and appreciate you, and that equals a sense of belonging and happiness.
But it doesn’t work because as you morph yourself into the persona you think they demand of you, you become flotsam, tossing with the breeze, acquiescing to what is asked of you in order to please, changing your mind with lighting speed to their opinions, beating around the bush until you figure out what you think they think and then making sure that’s what you say. It doesn’t work because you end up being a different person with each person you are with, including yourself. It gets to the point where who you are is as distant as a faraway star.
I think the wind is whipping up.
