Bullies…we’ve known a few

Bullies. They come in all shapes and sizes. Someone thinking they’re stronger or superior taking advantage of someone else who they perceive as weaker or inferior – well, that goes all the way back to Cain and Abel. Heck, you could say even back to the Serpent and Eve.

There’s something of which I’d never thought.  

Satan was the first psychological bully and Cain was the first physical bully. 

Bullying isn’t just baked into our DNA but imprinted on our spirits going all the way back to “In the beginning…” 

But here’s the thing about beginnings: Each one is a chance to start anew – or something new.

“Why do we fall?” asked Alfred Pennyworth in Batman Begins. The answer? “So that we can learn to pick ourselves back up again.”

Lucifer fell and became the embodiment of evil. But without his example, without that symbol of what can happen when we fall, we wouldn’t have the motivation to rise. To rise above our condition or the conditions that could easily make us the next bully, perpetuating the cycle of which we’re a part.

And for the person who finds themselves on the receiving end of someone who was unable to step out of that cycle, they, too, have an opportunity to rise. To not allow themselves to be defined as the bully defines them – as weak, ugly, inferior. To not have their self-worth – or their present or future – be torn down by a person who’s trying to satisfy their own need to feel better about themselves as they run on their hamster wheel of pain by making their victim feel how they do, deep inside.

For all of us who have found or will find ourselves face to face with a bully, that is our lesson – our motivation: To not be drawn into that wheel with the bully, to not fall with them, but to use our experience as a reason to do and be better for ourselves – and for others.  

That is why Dr. Maryanne Kane, author of Tattletales From School, has asked that all proceeds from the sale of her book be donated to UNICEF, which is working to support children in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin is the archetypal playground bully: Not only pushing around others who he deems to be inferior to him and therefore deserving of being bullied, but sending in his cronies, with whom he surrounds himself, to fight his battles for him. 

He has given Ukraine its motivation to stand and fight – and us our motivation to stand and fight with them.  

And let’s see how the bully fares when that fight is brought to him.