Taking a stance value 3: Bullying has to stop

There have always been bullies and it’s a sad way for humans to cope with their insecurities, but it happens.

The thing is that now that it has a name, a label, and intense exposure, you’d think it’d be dealt with better… and somehow it feels as if it’s gotten worse and more out of control.

Some people might say that it all has to do with media coverage and they might have a point, but there does seem to be something else at play. We’re not talking “gimme your lunch money” bullying, we’re not talking knocking books to the floor bullying, we’re talking striking with a bat, pulling out a switchblade bullying. We’re talking about terrorizing and torturing. I'm not saying this never happened before, mind you. I'm not saying that it was never this bad. All I'm saying is that it's becoming very common and when things become common, we run the risk of getting used to it. 

As a topic, I think it is one of the saddest things that can happen because childhood should be a time of learning, sharing and growing. Instead, there’s an increase in children researching and asking for home schooling because they honestly can't cope with the abuse. It’s gotten to the point that since things aren’t handled, they take matters into their own hand by opting out of school systems… another choice reflects a very sad state of affairs, there’s a higher incidence of teen suicide. Things aren’t getting any better and the topic isn’t going away.

Ok… so what do we do?

In an age of connection, it’s amazing how many people are disconnected from this issue. Sure, they know about it, but they think it has nothing to do with them or their kids.

Now, I’m all for standing up for oneself, but things are often going too far and worst of all, there are often witnesses… silent witnesses at that.

Therein lays the problem and the solution.

No one likes a tattletale, I get it. I really do. But I’d more likely prefer a tattletale than seeing another tragedy unfold.

I’ve seen bullying or picking on someone, hell when I was a teen, I said some things I’m thankful I was confronted with, forced to talk over and was very lucky to be able to properly apologize and modify my ways. I was even bullied on a couple of occasions and yes I did have two fights that I didn't even get to finish. But we’re not talking about name calling, high school fights, or something on those lines... we’re talking about intense and violent harassment for which people would get arrested if they did stuff like that after they turned 18.

The two main problems in regards to this are blindness and silence. So it begs the question, if you see something, will you “mind your own business” or keep at least one tragedy from the news?