How to avoid becoming what you hate

Photo by Claudia on Unsplash

Throughout high school I had a hatred for anyone who made fun of my friends. I was (and to an extent, still am) very protective of them. Plus I knew what it felt like to be ridiculed for doing nothing other than just being yourself.

However, irony is at play here. They judged me and my social misfit friends, but wasn’t I doing the exact same thing to them? Wasn’t I judging their behaviour towards us? I resented their lack of acceptance, but clearly I wasn’t very accepting either.

You have a reason for being different. Didn’t they have a reason for being antagonistic?

But everything would come full circle on the night of our graduation. The valedictorian gave his speech and in it, he referenced a super-embarrassing thing that happened to one of my friends that caused all of us to scream in delirious laughter, including myself.

I’ve replayed that night in my mind probably at least once every two weeks since 2005. I cringe every time. I sat behind him that night and remember seeing him swallowed in ridicule and rejection. I took grad pictures with him afterwards feeling like such a hypocrite.

And that’s just one tale in a list of a number of times where I condemned something and then became it. Maybe you have your own cringe-inducing moments where you caught yourself in the same act…