It's chilling to me to see children being bullied, or harassed, verbally or otherwise. I don't say this because I can see myself being bullied, this is what most people would expect, but I can see myself as the bully. I've done a lot of thinking in my seventeen years on this planet, but more importantly I've done a lot of observing. I've seen kids cheat on tests, steal from their mother's purse, and sneak out of their homes at illegal hours. None of this bothers me. But when I see a child call the weird kid in the corner a loser, something in me dies. The fine strand the connects my logical reasoning to my moral character does not snap, as some would put it, but rather tightens, fusing both parts of my mind into a furious cord of fiery synapses. My reason is my ethos, and my emotion is the will to seize the bully child and throttle him. Why?
Well the bully is in the wrong, yes. But more importantly, I have seen myself in the bully. I have always had the capacity to be mean, which I do not believe to be an innate characteristic but its capacity was rendered within me nonetheless, yet there was never a time that I did not reflect on my meanness and truly question its motives. I made a conscious decision, maybe near the age of 8, to stop this. To stop this bullying. Why? Not exactly because it was harmful to others, although I hate to cause others harm, but mainly because it was too easy. It is too damn easy to be mean to others and if the whole world got used to doing the easy thing, which consequently is the wrong thing, then we would be most screwed at this point in time.
The bully must know how easy it is, he must also know how craven it is to avoid the opposite spectrum of human emotion.
We all just need to test ourselves, look at someone's mirror and find yourself.