I have to admit that I have always wondered how we can know that the things that other people say are only their opinions, yet we still find it difficult to ignore.
If someone laughs at us, why do we take offence? If someone tells us something bad about ourselves, why do we assume that they are right? If someone cuts us off in traffic, why do we assume that they did it just to make us angry?
Here is my story. If someone calls me fat, I actually like it, because I have been thin my whole life and have always wanted to have some more weight. So, this is a bit of a sensitive issue for me.
When I meet people in social situations sometimes people make comments. They say things like, “My God, have you lost weight?” “You should eat something.” ‘Are you sick?” It is something I have tried to ignore, but when something is said in front of lots of other people, there is the inevitable feeling inside that all my efforts to put on weight have miserably failed.
So, even though it is socially acceptable to say these things, it doesn’t make it any easier to hear. On the other hand. If someone overweight is publicly embarressed by comments like, “Oh my God you are fat!” “You should stop eating so much” or “Are you sick?” then it is the general consensus that the name caller is being very rude.
This leads us to political correctness and sensitivity where society decides what is right and wrong and what is polite or not.
Topics such as religion and race and being overweight have a kind of hush around them that forbids anyone expressing any ideas without being jumped on as a rascist, or what have you.
But who decides what is offensive?
I was in a minority group which was not recognized as being sensitive, so people said what they want, but a sensitive group has an extra reason to get defensive they have the whole of their kind up in arms about being ridiculed.
My point is that what good does it do to be defensive about anything, whether it be sensitive or not?
What is wrong with criticisms?
If someone says “owwww! You have darker skin!” Why do we assume that it is bad?
If someone says “Owwww you are shorter and you look different!” Why is this so bad?
So what? Do you look the same as your mother and father together? Looking back, I am now happy that I went through all those criticisms because it has made me realise that we are all too sensitive about what people say to us. I had to deal with the idea that people may not enjoy looking at me as much as others, but who is to say that it is not good?
In some cultures being thin is great. For women in western culture, it is very popular. In other cultures they think that being tall and of light skin is everything and others that think that being fat and rounded is better.
Women in the West all go to the beach to look darker and all the women in the east cover up to get lighter.
So basically, what it comes down to is that our culture determines what is popular and we need to be more openminded to realise that there are other things out there that are different. You don’t have to believe that you are no good if you just open your eyes and look.
Do you think people are better off not knowing what others think? I hope one day we can go through a kind of revolution where we cannot lie to each other like in ‘The Invention of Lying’ movie so we can get over the uncomfortableness of being criticised and just learn to move on from it.
I really believe that we are emotionally ignorant as a society when we take offence, because we do it on an unconscious level. If we were able to just hear what the person says and accept it as only their opinion, we may realise that it doesn’t actually mean anything.
And more importantly we would soon discover that what the person says about us is actually what they feel about themselves, not us.