After so long time since I updated my blog, and still I want to write something serious here -- Bullying. This is not a fresh topic but the act can actually destroy a person's life forever.
When we mention about bullying, we think about school. Yes, this is where bullying starts. All of us hope to make friends and if possible, make friends with those powerful and influential, so that we can live a better social life in school. Make friends with smart students, leader in clubs, head of class, etc. is a norm. We always see those people have a lot of friends. When we think we are one of their friends, we feel safe, proud and happy. Is that true? Let's think about those unlucky ones. When somebody in your class becomes a target of bullying by those powerful 'friends', you laugh with them, call out names.... And the one being bullied has to bear all sorts of 'crimes' that we all created. Why they become targets? Because they are not pretty enough? Not smart enough? Always sit silently at the edge of classroom? Looked dumb? Not good in speeches? Clumsy in everything? Fine. Any excuses you can find is the reason why. Please bear in your mind - these victims will end up with psychological trauma, and they might never live a happy life anymore. Guess what? They may become the next college shooter? Serial killer? or whatever.
What about you? You struggle hard to follow the pace of your powerful friend, to stay alive in your circle of friends, so that you won't become the next target. This cycle repeats everyday, in every school, every club, every society, and now in every workplace too...
Can I say Bullying is a kind of Politic? Especially newbies entering a company, we hope to make friends as much as we can with seniors, bosses, colleagues. Socializing skill has become the major skill apart from your core working skill or knowledge. Pity for those not good in socializing, not good in working, being labelled as lazy, stupid, slow. Soon, this label or funny names will spread across the whole department, then the whole company. So, how about ourselves? Can we make sure we are safe forever from these 'politic players'? We also worried, right? We play their games, agree to their laughing stock, follow their trend, to survive - outwit, outplay, outlast!
Most of the time, Bullying has become a Survivor game. We fight hard to stay in the game, avoiding from being voted out from the circle. However, this is also a reality, it happens before our own eyes every day. Do you ever get tired of playing this game? When you stop playing, will you become the next target? Do you ever think of standing out to join those unlucky ones and fight back? It will definitely be a very tough journey.
I want to apologize here, sometimes we might get along to play their games, in order to survive in workplace politics. When I start to realized that, I have to remind myself, stop this immediately, you are here to HELP them not to watch them suffer. We feel happy by helping people all the time, don't we?
In short, to make things easy, why don't we stop bullying, stop playing this game wherever we are? Show some mercy to the unlucky ones, lend them shoulders, do them a favour. Now it's time to let us create harmony and love and make our workplace a better place! =)
