Spread the Good

For the past few weeks, my son has been coming home with stories about kids who were bullying him. It started off with being pushed down one day on the playground. Thankfully, his teacher saw and put an immediate end to the physical part. But then it turned to verbal bullying-calling him names, even telling him his head looks like a penis.

His head does not look like a penis. I might be biased, but as I pointed out to my son, we've seen penises. We can see his head. They don't look the same!

In any event, he's gone to his teacher, then the principal of his school regarding this issue. Sometimes the things they've done works for a minute or two, but never very long. Since it doesn't seem to behoove either him or I for me to go to the school and knock some sense into the little pecker heads, I've been trying to figure out how to tell my son to deal with these bullies. Which is difficult, since I spent a significant portion of my childhood trying to find the answer to that very question.

What I know now as an adult is that the kids that bullied me either did so out of envy or spite. That I had something they didn't, and rather than befriend me, the only tools they had in their emotional toolbox was to make fun of, ostrasize, and belittle me.

Unfortunately, it worked.

That's where I've been struggling to figure out what to tell my son, since "It gets better" doesn't seem to be working for him.

And then I'm faced with a real life situation as an adult where I'm forced to look at a situation and say, "Oh crap...I'm being bullied...by adults!" Suddenly, I'm face to face with my son on this one thing; a bi-generation act of karmic fuckery that makes me see the light a little more clearly than I ever had before.

Bullies say things that are mean and unkind. Usually, there's more than one of them, and they taunt so loudly that it's hard to hear yourself think sometimes. Worst off, they tell you that "everyone else feels like this", and since nobody ever really stands up to disagree, you start wondering... oh God...What if they are just telling me what everyone thinks?

Today, I looked at my son real hard and told him what might be the one thing that takes the sting out of their words: Everyone does not agree with what they're saying. A bully will want you to believe they do, because that means the bully isn't wrong for what they're feeling. The reality of the situation  is this: keep doing what you're doing. Be the best you that you can be. Strive to know yourself, understand yourself, and take what gifts you find that you've been given and spread them out! If your gift is being kind, be kind to everyone. If it's making people laugh, find someone with a frown and brighten their day. Eventually, you will be too busy spreading around the good parts of you that people will either not notice or not care about the bad. It just might be that the meaning of life is to spread the good you find within yourself.

I'm crying as I write this because I'm so sad to say that I feel like I lied to my kid. It doesn't always get better. Being told nobody likes you hurts whether you are 7 or 27 or 97. But you must know that they are wrong. I must know that they are wrong. Because I look into my sons eyes and see how compassionate and caring he is, how sensitive and understanding and thoughtful he is, and I know that even if he is the one thing I've done right, he has made my entire life worth living.