Do you know that feeling you get, when you’re arguing with someone about a topic that never deserved any arguing in the first place? Like that time, you were arguing with your grandpa about the rights of gay people and then ended up wondering how on earth the NG church got into the conversation. Or, it’s kind of like the time someone made a humourless joke about a bomb going off as a woman in a hijab walked past. It’s the feeling of boiling blood and awe at the idiocy that surrounds you.
Many times, in my life I have experienced this type of anger, and have struggled to comprehend that some people are just painstakingly blind to all of the “-isms”. How this can be, still surpasses me day by day. I understand that the way someone was nurtured in their upbringing might result in such a lack of empathy. But nonetheless, nature should at some point muster up a long list of questions inside that person, about said hopeless upbringing, should it not? Well, as I have learned, time and again, this is rarely the case. I have shared conversations with grown men where a few minutes in, I’m forced to leave at the risk of possibly saying some very uncivil words to the racist sitting in front of me.
In my 21 years on this earth, I have learned something that no teacher and their blackboard could ever compel into my ADD prone brain. My second education has taught me that kicking and screaming my viewpoint into someone’s ears is not the way to go, adding to the fact that it never works anyway. Yes, it’s tempting to give someone like that a very opinionated slice of humble pie, but as it turns out, the insults that you will – deservingly – serve with the pie, make you no better than the person receiving them.
Sometimes we forget that even the worst people in this world, need compassion. Even if it is only the smallest drop you can summon. Instead of using derogatory words to tell people how wrong they are, I’ve recently discovered something I like to call “thought seeds”. This idea was born out of the necessary compassion I spoke of earlier. For thought seeds to be effective, compassion is compulsory. Imagine that compassion is figurative water needed for the thought seed to thrive.
Now, thought seeds are rational, “good person” ways of thinking and ideas that you introduce to the ‘-ist’ or ‘-phobe’ in question. For example, I use thought seeds on my grandparents who haven’t warmed up to anyone who falls under the LGBTQI umbrella. The conversation goes something like this: “Grandpa, why do most older people hate the idea of a gay man on the show Boer Soek n Vrou, but welcome people in the beauty industry like Hannon or even Nataniel?”, after a moment accompanied by a puzzled look he’ll most likely answer with a simple, “I don’t know”. And before you know it, you’ve planted the first seed of many.
Rationality and logical conversation go much further than conversations where people are throwing things at each other. So, as most things in life, this stays a challenge for me, but because I refuse to lower myself to the level of the “-ist” or “-phobe”, I continue to pack compassion and rationality with me each day. Just in case I, or someone else, might need them. So, instead of adding to the enormous amount of hate in this world, let’s not fight hate with hate. But instead fight it with civility and rationality, accompanied with the sweet taste of compassion, and hope that someday that racist or homophobe might be able to shake the suffix.
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