In college, we spent a whole day in class talking about bullying. There is a thing called the Bullying Cycle. The cycle explains different people involved in bullying. There is the bully, the victim, henchmen, defenders, and the passive onlookers. The professor asked who is the worst person in this scenario? Many people think it is the bully or the henchmen but in fact it is the people who watch from afar and refuse to acknowledge the problem. You see, if people spoke up instead of watch, the bully loses power and becomes a fool. Bullies feed off of attention and fear but when the role is reversed they are put in their place and becomes powerless. The person who ignores the problem is just as much of a bully as the person who does the actual bullying because they allow it to happen.
This hit hard for me. When I was in high school, I watched so many times as one student in particular got bullied almost daily. It wasn’t always to their face but I realize now when I heard the jokes in silence I was feeding the fuel because I made it seem like it was OK for that person to be the subject of all the jokes. This is my biggest regret in high school. I did not have the courage to speak up for my classmate because I did not want to become the target. I realize now because I did not speak up I was also a bully.
Now as I watch the news and read articles I see the bully cycle all over outside of the school day. Are we to sit in silence and watch as certain people bully their way into power? We watch as people make excuses into why things are happening and how it is not their problem because they have bigger problems to worry about. Who is to decide what is a problem and what can be ignored? If we are aware of an issue and do not speak up for it we are as much as to blame as those who are in power.
“Our lives begin to end the day we decide to become silent about things that matter,” Martin Luther King Jr.
It is your choice. Are you going to be the bystander or are you going to be the defender?
Bee the Thread 