It has been three days since I first started heavily researching teen bullying and teen suicides as a consequence thereof. I’ve felt so sick over it for the past few days that I had to write it down and put it out there for fear that keeping it in might swallow me whole. It’s a karate blog, yes, but I see the way we threat others and the energy we put out and take in from others as a part of karate, and a part of life. This is my disclosure that this is not a typical karate post so read on if you choose to.
I have been in many crowds where you could feel the energy in the air as if it was tangible. Positivity, unity, humanity. This is the kind of energy I think is always around me and it drives me to be better and do what I can to help others. I have always felt that “we’re all in this together” and when I think of bullying, child abuse, or any kind of abuse really, I’ve always concentrated on the victim and ways I could educate myself to have enough power to help these people. I decided pursuing law was the best way to get me to that place and as I get closer to actually starting law school I feel like I’m that much closer to helping them. All of these are my positive thoughts, however a few days ago when I was researching teen bullying I think it was the first time I had chosen to really focus on the bullies themselves.
I have never been so disgusted in my life.
My belief that everyone has some good in them, and us “being in this together”, was shattered as I read comments that people made about a teenage girl who took her life because she could not stand to be bullied any longer. This girl lost her life over this. She will never be a parent, or a sister, she will never grow up and see that there’s another side to this life. She’s gone, forever, that’s it. For someone to say that they are happy about that… I just don’t know what you could ever do to fix someone like that. I was left with the thought, “you could fight to help one person at a time, but this will just keep occurring and reoccurring, maybe even at the hands of the same perpetrator”. This feeling of helplessness was so overwhelming the sky seemed darker for the last few days, and I couldn’t find my way out of bed yesterday, just thinking about how people could blatantly hurt others this way.
Social media is a tool for marketers, that’s what I was taught in school. Now though, I am now seeing many videos of teenagers on their last hope just looking for someone to relate to them, someone to help them, and this is where they were driven to share their message. “I have nobody… I need someone =(” is one of the last things she wrote in her video. And now she, and many like her, are gone.
Maybe I’m just too sensitive. Maybe I can only hope to accomplish what I can and have to be satisfied with that. But if I really believe that there is an electric energy just coursing over us, and that we can affect other people’s energy, then these people out there, who would put a Clorox bottle as their profile picture to make fun of someone who committed suicide by drinking bleach, can influence people just the same as you and I can. I could not help but feel like I was fighting a useless battle, because a dozen negative voice against you are always louder than hundreds who are telling you to live.
Please just live. I don’t know you but I know there are many others out there who are just as sensitive to what you’re going through as I am.
Live.
We’re coming.
My Daily Sanchin 