The good side of bullying

Before I start out this blog, I would like to say that I absolutely do not support bullying at all. You should not go out and start bullying people after reading this blog.

With that out of the way, I would like to talk about how I think that getting bullied is an essential core part of life.

In the world we live in, it is inevitable that you get bullied at least once in your life. Most people get bullied at some point in their childhood and a lot of people still get bullied later down in their lives. Whilst nobody explicitly enjoys getting bullied, we all learn to eventually live with it.

I would argue that if the bullying isn't too cruel, getting bullied can lead to a lot of personal growth. They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger and I think that this is to some degrees true with getting bullied. Human nature has its way of conditioning people into society through punishment and one of those ways is through getting bullied.

Growing up, I, like most people, got bullied quite a bit. But I could quite confidently say that that bullying ended up shaping who I am today. Anything I used to do that might be considered weird were much more efficiently solved through bullying than through teaching. Though I did not like it, it still taught me many important lessons. In a way, I might say that I'm even thankful that I've been bullied.

Now there is a fine line where bullying becomes excessive and starts to hurt a lot more than it helps. Usually this happens when you get repetitively picked on out of spite. Seemingly, this is only to the enjoyment of the bully. But there is a second benefit of getting bullied. Other than helping you adapt to society, bullying can also help you toughen up as a person. It's important for people to have a strong support system, but at the same time, you should be able to support yourself as well. Getting bullied makes you better at conflict resolution and makes you emotionally stronger. It's like putting your emotions to the gym.

I think that being emotionally stable is quite an important thing in life. You're out in the world where there are already thousands of external problems that you have to deal with, most of them are mostly out of your control. In a world like this, you might as well learn to deal with your internal emotional problems as that is oftentimes much more in your own control. At least to me, small doses of bullying seem to be the perfect vaccine to keeping me emotionally ready to deal with the problems of the outside world.

In a way, being pushed down also makes us push harder in life. There's no point in being so ambitious in life if life was already so easy. Tension just so happens to create a lot of motivation, and competition pushes us to our limits. These kinds of things don't only come purely from bullying, but a lot of times they could.

In a weird way, Thailand as a nation is a country that doesn't get "bullied" much. We're at peace with our neighbors most of the times and we don't face any real local threats or competitions. We're also situated in a fertile area and we're safe from most natural disasters. This is all good, but at the same time it doesn't push us to be any better as a nation. We're just easy going and vibing along with the flow. In contrast, countries like Singapore, which often get threatened due to its small size, or European nations, which compete against each other all the time, need to constantly be developing itself to not fall behind and stand up against the "bullying".

Again, it's important to note that this whole bullying rant is only true when the bullying is in light doses and doesn't completely destroy the one who got bullied. Obviously, at a certain tipping point, there could be too much bullying to the point where it heavily negatively impacts those who got bullied. But again, I think if it doesn't "kill" you, it will to some degree make you stronger.

A good story always has conflicts. And in the story of life, that conflict a lot of times ends up being bullying. Whilst I still very much don't support bullying, I do think it's inevitable through human nature and has way more benefits than most people give credit to.

Again, one last time, to be very very clear, I do not support bullying. Please do not go out and bully random people after reading this blog.