I was thinking about what is the most horrible thing in the world.

The most horrifying thing I experienced was bullying.

It is definitely a problem from young children to adult society, and the cause of it is early childhood education.

When I was a child I had the experience of being ostracized by my closest friends.

I used to have bad dreams.

 

When I was a small child (around the fourth grade), my grandpa’ house burned down in a big fire which I was living in at the time.

Then my parents built a new house in another town, and later, after we moved to another town.

I was excluded from their group because I was away from the people who lived in the previous town I used to play with every day.

Looking back, I may have betrayed them first by saying to them, “I am living in a town now, so I don’t belong to this town anymore.”

 

I did not want my parents and friends to know about my past, which was not cool and something I should not have had.

I could not tell them that I was being bullied, even if I wanted to.

I think it was from this traumatic childhood experience that I learned to be more patient with society.

 

It was difficult for me to be betrayed and ostracized by friends I trusted.

I think it was this experience of being betrayed, I trusted that made it difficult for me to trust people.

Even as an adult, it became difficult for me to build deep relationships with others.

My personality, which has always been uncooperative, became evident in the first year of junior high school, when I remember being ostracized as soon as I entered the school. This was due to my behavior in the football club.

 

By the time I entered eighth grade.

I started hanging out with the girls and the left out gradually disappeared, probably due to puberty. After that, I witnessed how the “target” changed, and when I understood the reason, I began to treat people in a cooperative manner without putting myself out there as much as possible.

The reason was a wisdom I learned that If you do something different or unusual, you will be beaten.

Up until that time, I was a high achiever and always scored 100 points on tests. (In Japan, the score’s are 0 to 100, the under 30 scores called red it means F in the U.S.) I thought my grades dropped because I enjoyed playing with girls.

But, I thought in my mind now, I was just acting like an idiot because if I stood out, I would get beaten up again.

 

Bullying in elementary school was terrible. It was like hell.

To be honest, I remember that the bullying was pretty bad for main target in the class.

I also remember very little about it, but I do remember that the whole class was his enemy, and they even tried to jump off the balcony.

I don’t know what the teacher was doing either and what I was doing was trying to avoid targeting then.

“You suck, just die!”

I was really frightened at the place of children’s education where such words as a bad word were commonplace.

I was very saddened to hear about the bullying in Japan and in the U.S.

They had to break it off somehow on their own. It is really tough, and it takes guts to choose the best action for oneself.

 

Back to my story.

In the seventh grade, I started ignoring a group of people who had been ostracizing me.

They weren’t being violent, so I ignored them anyway.

I didn’t care at all what they did to me, just ignored them and it worked.

This was one of the moves that freed me from the bullies.

 

The bullies are happy when you are dealing with them.

The only way to end this was to ignore them.

 

Then I remember they moved away from me and started targeting someone else. After a year or so, they started talking to me normally as if nothing had happened.

 

By the time I was in my third year of junior high school, I was blessed with a group of friends with whom I was comfortable.

Later, in high school, I was vice president of the athletic team.

Looking back on it now, I think I’ve come a long way from the outcasts of my childhood.

 

I think there are no rules.

 

If you are targeted, I would recommend ignoring the bully if at all possible and keeping your distance from the person involved.

 

Such trauma can hinder the building of relationships even after adulthood. That is why early childhood education is really important.

The experience of bullying in middle school, and elementary school will stay with them long into adulthood.

It will stay with them in adulthood too.

 

Some children may even give up their lives or be killed by bullies.

 

In Japanese society, we often hear stories of bullying, even in adulthood.

Bullying occurs in places and environments where cooperation is valued, such as mothers’ gatherings (If people live in a community, they have some kind of meetings only womens, mothers. To have conversation or baking or do activities together no matter what you don’t want to go with them), and also work environment from bosses and coworkers at work, and so on.

I would like to assert that bullying is definitely a result of a distorted upbringing and experience as an infant or a child.

 

I believe that the root of the problem lies in the twisted Japanese education system that forcibly forces people to be in sync with each other.

 

I myself have been blessed with good friends and have been able to live happily ever after.

 

However, as I have been researching myself recently, I have been feeling that something from a traumatic event in my past is still stuck in my mind. I think this is the reason why I don’t trust people easily.

Until recently, I was extremely afraid of being disliked, so I tried to be cooperative and sympathetic.

I realized that this became very painful and hindered what I really wanted to say and what I wanted to do now, so I started to say NO and my relationships became simpler.

 

Yes, It was something I wanted to do.

I started spending more and more time alone.

I felt like I was suffering from a gap compared to when I used to hang out with a lot of friends, so I decided to write a blog about this bullying thing.

 

Lately, I am simply trying to build only the relationships that I need.

I respected their wishes, said “NO” if I didn’t want to go now, and if I felt uncomfortable, I told them that and left.

 

Thanks to this, the stress is now almost non-existent.

And now, I can see clearly what I have to do now.

 

However, society is so big that it is difficult to understand what I have to do.

I wonder every day if what I am doing now is really the right thing to do, even though the world is made up of human relationships.

 

This is what is my “confusion.” Like, Should I say “yes” to something even if I don’t want to do it? We should because we live in society? Say “Yes”?

 

It is not easy to live on one’s own flow always.

However, if I could live my life on my own without giving up, I think that I would be less frightened by society and less likely to be bullied.

Like, I walk to do purpose even if i don’t have a purpose, acting like I walk to do purpose.

 

Be strong with the flow and focus yourself.

This is true for both people who bully and the bullied. It is absolutely healthy to focus on oneself without being obsessed with the other person for both sides.

 

Essentially,

If we didn’t hunt, we would starve to death, but now we don’t have to worry about that, and we tend to focus on others even more. Then, we like “grouping.” cannot be alone.

And living in a group, on the contrary, is creating more and more mental illnesses.

Living in a group is not safe and can be dangerous for our generation. So we need to have a technique to protect ourselves from living in our society.

 

First of all, you need to have your own mind in anti-bullying.

The way to do that is :

• Always put your own feelings first before responding or receiving a response.
• Never hand over the reins to the other person.
• Always make your own choices and decisions.

 

I started to live by these principles when I came to the U.S. as an adult.

I should have done this when I was a child.

 

Instead of learning to follow to others.

I learned to speak my mind and to say them.

I learned to say NO to things I didn’t like.

 

Ignore or leave the room If you don’t want to be a part of the group.

 

If there is bullying, ask your parents for help until it goes away, or worse, you don’t have to go to school. You don’t have to go to school to have an education and friendships.

 

Just s*m*a*s*h Social standards!

 

The children should be themself.

 

It’s should not be repression such as “making friends are good so you should have a lot”, “you should be smart so you should go to a good college”, with conforming to our social standards.

Instead, we should educate them to value their lives and themselves first and foremost.

 

We need to teach people to value their lives and value themselves first and foremost, and to learn to express their own opinions, even if others do not like them.

By having as many people as possible learn to live their lives without giving in to peer pressure and without losing sight of who they are, they will be free from “bullying.

 

Ignore the “bullies” until they lose interest in you, even if it is painful.

 

Instead, be yourself.

Walk forward like ” I walk to my purpose.”

 

Then it doesn’t matter what people around you say.

 

We are here on this earth to live as we are.

 

ZenJin