October is National Bullying Prevention Month is the United States. Bullying is a subject I’ve never been comfortable discussing, despite my familiarity with it. When I’ve spoken at schools and the topic is dangling right in front of me, I still put it off for as long as possible. I don’t like to be defined by those experiences or give them any more thought than they’ve already taken up in my mind.
Thus, I’m not going to share specific details about my run-ins with bullying on this post. All I can tell you is bullying has impacted me in physical ways on a couple of occasions way back when, and in verbal and emotional fashions throughout my life. Those encounters have left invisible scars on my soul, though I do my best not to let them dictate my outlook on the present and future.
To me, the most lasting effect of bullying is the way it can shape your view of yourself. Regardless of what we may claim, we all care about what people think of us. In the right measure, that can be a good thing, as that influence can prevent us from doing something that’s not beneficial to us in the grand scheme of things, anyhow, like refraining from eating a tub of ice cream in one setting for fear somebody thinks it’s excessive. It can also help us keep good relationships because we don’t want to hurt the other person. When you’re dealing with someone who wants to bring you down and have low self-esteem, however, that desire for approval doesn’t get satisfied. On the contrary, you can start to see yourself through those critical eyes and believe what they’re telling you.
In the post Is Observation the Best Education?, I compared decisions we make in life to products we might buy. Even the best products on the market have bad reviews. Why? Sometimes, the owner didn’t use it as it was designed, and other times, the product just wasn’t what the reviewer expected it to be. We also can’t ignore the possibility of the person having a bad day or a demeanor that’s prone to viewing things in a negative light.
Likewise, not everybody will take a favorable opinion of us. Maybe we don’t have the type of personality they’re drawn to, maybe we caught them on a bad day, or maybe they caught us on a bad day! In the case of bullying, it could well be that they’re insecure about a quality or skill we possess. It’s a shame that it can manifest itself in the form of mistreatment, but in those instances, we can consider it like a bad review.
People who truly know and care about us keep us balanced in this regard. They’re similar to the good reviews on the product of us as individuals. Perhaps they’ll give us honest input on how to improve in one area or another, but they can kindly help us appreciate our value. When they do, we ought to believe what they say, just as we would with a reviewer who’s owned the product for a long time and had success with it, rather than one who barely opened the box and took an unpleased assessment of it.
In the end, we’re ultimately the ones who define us. Unlike a product, though, we hear the reviews others leave about us, whether it be through admiration, counsel, criticism, or blatant mistreatment. It’s up to us to determine which to listen to and trust. We should endeavor to cherish the feedback from those who really know us, filter out those who don’t, and never let the ill-effects of unkindness embitter us to the point of becoming unkind to others.
