The first full week of class is over and if this is what the next 7 months is like, I have no idea the person I will turn out to be. I contemplated on my morning walk home if there is a purpose in life. If we have dharma, our duty, could it be possible that purpose really doesn’t exist? This was a terrifying thought and also a relief.
There is a park next to a school on my walk home. At the entrance of the park, a boy carrying a rock passed me and then I notice all these kids literally throwing rocks at each other. My initial thought was that it is ironic that in the Unites States kids cyberbully other children. Here, children try to stone themselves.
Isn’t it what the world is really like? You are walking through a park trying to avoid being hit with stones. That the dilemma was in the fact that I contemplated if it was my place to say something. I used to rescue people from their own situations. I used to step in when it wasn’t my place and try to fix peoples’ circumstances. I was raised this way. When someone throws a stone at someone, who’s responsibility is it to warn, stick up for or protect the person who is receiving the stoning?
In an episode of Handmaid’s Tale, Joan sticks up for a character that is to receive a stoning for trying to hurt a child. Joan struggled with the humility but knowing the consequences of refusing to follow an order. The entire group of people knew that this was wrong. They in solidarity and everyone dropped their rocks.
Over the past two years so many things have changed within me, but many of the same traits remain. I am gullible. I want to see the good in people so much so that I will make things up to make them good people. However, now that this trait is glowing in front of me, I have noticed a withdraw from meeting new people or engaging in social situations that don’t contribute something positive to mine and others’ lives. I have even been distancing myself from conversations. I have been asking people that I know that gossip if they are going to have a conversation or if it gossip because I simply have no interest in the ladder. I enjoy this inward space but it feels like I am in an identity crisis.
I can’t but help make the correlation between these school kids and the people that would love to see me humiliated or destroyed. I have thrown my stones as well when provoked. I’m one of those people that are blindly nice until crossed. After the first stone is thrown, I used to throw one back. All of the people that I have been close to me have had a bridge burned by me or by themselves. While I miss them, I know I’m better off without them.
As for the boy that was going to throw a rock from the entrance of the park, I told him to place the rock down. He looked at me and blatantly ignored me. I told another group of children to stop it but they either didn’t understand me or couldn’t figure out why this complete stranger and a foreigner was interfering with their version of fun. Rather than making a safe environment for me and the others, I was ignored and the world kept throwing stones each other.