What I Wish I Knew Before I Turned 22: There’s No Need To Defend Yourself When You Know You&#8

And that is why Peter “ROCKS.”

It was next to impossible for me to turn the other cheek.

Because nothing is worse than being a pussy.

And with that kind of teenage pseudo-philosophy, I stood up against the likes of Jesse (not his real name), whose six-foot-something alpha maleness was the very encyclopedic illustration of a high school bully. He called me a thief in front of the whole class when I mistakenly claimed his size-XL shirt in the batch shirt distribution mix-up. I remember feeling a mixture of shame and anger even as he pointed his fat finger at me. And then I felt an overwhelming sense of triumph when he started to stagger backwards when I got up from my seat in all my five-foot-something temper, telling him that nobody, not even my own father, had the right to talk to me the way he did.

And then I stormed out of the room, like all the lead actresses did in a movie about their dramatic lives.

But the anger I felt during the high school Jesse episode was nothing compared to how I felt with college Geoff (again, not his real name). Geoff was supposed to be the ultimate girl-stuck-in-a-boy’s-body friend – gay, spontaneous, with just the right dash of dirty in his wonderful sense of humor. Living in the same neighborhood, we took the same jeepney route together going home and shared each other’s dark secrets. When we had a petty fallout during the second year, gossip spread quickly, the content being my dysfunctional family and the source, my confidante-turned-traitor. That was probably the one time I felt an all-consuming fury, the kind that would have earned me a spot in the fifth circle of Dante’s Inferno. It was one thing to be mistreated but entirely another thing and infinitely more painful to have people you love mistreated – spoken badly and thought worse of. And the thing about gossips is that they spread the most salacious of scandals behind your back, yet they can barely form a single intelligible sentence once confronted. Such was the case of Geoff who, having heard my case, asked for my forgiveness, only to have it snubbed with a, “Don’t apologize to me. Apologize to my mom and dad yourself.”

Those two triumphant moments proved that, though I may be called a lot of things, a pussy is definitely not one of them.

I’m not a pussy.

I’m the anti-thesis of a pussy.

But please don’t mistake me for a bully magnet, either. Growing up, my ability to defend myself kept most of the bullies away. Dealing with bullies was a rare occurrence for me, and, as previously established, one sassy confrontation usually sent them running in the opposite direction.

So it came as a total surprise when I found myself bullied in the workplace, in the one place where I pinned all my idealistic hopes of justice, equality, and, on the whole, Thomas More-inspired utopia.

But I’m no longer a college sophomore, and 6 solid years too late to act like a high school senior. It’s ridiculous to be put in this kind of situation, but the fact stands that, however childish my tormentor acts towards me, I’m an adult. It’s time I started acting like one.

Now, I’m not going to don a burlap sack and parade saintliness that would make the Early Christian martyrs roll in their graves. I cannot stress enough the number of times I just would like to settle scores with this poor excuse of a human being – and I leave it to your imagination as to how the settling ought to be.

This sick creature had caused me months of painful estrangement from my colleagues. I cannot even begin to imagine the nasty rumors she spread about me. In the first place, where would she get that amount of material to use against me when I barely exchange a word with her? Here I must relent and give her props for her powerful use of imagination – never mind how unproductive she had been with her use of time. She succeeded in convincing them about my supposed God-knows-what’s. For a while.

Now the tables have turned without my having to lay a single finger.

I bit my tongue, and I swallowed my pride and my sarcasm. And though I rolled my eyes on occasion when nobody was watching, I was, for all intents and purposes, acting like a total pussy.

And still triumphed.

And this time, I feel infinitely more triumphant, because I did not have to take any part of the blame on myself.

Back when I was too busy saving my street cred and unleashing my inner sassy Kraken, I always had to deal with the aftermath guilt at having to share in the communal blame. It takes two to torment.

It doesn’t matter whether they are in school or in the workplace (or in the school that is your workplace); bullies of all ages are all the same. They are attention-starved. They don’t need you to give them a reason to hate you. Take this Regina George-wannabe, for example. She pounces on every pathetic chance she gets. It’s really sort of sad that way.

It is difficult to act like a pussy when you know deep down that you’re not.

And it’s just not enough of a motivational drive to ignore (as opposed to crazy axe-murder) your personal tormentor hoping that, one day, he/she would wind up sabotaging what little hold she has on people…

… Which, by the way, is exactly what happened to my bully. This makes me pret-ty darn luck, right?

Wrong!

It’s all too human for me to relish my long delayed victory, but when all is said and done, the real victim is still the bully.

He or she (but let’s just be clear now that my bully is a she) has to live with the guilt of inflicting pain on others in addition to the pain she inflicted on herself.

And for this self-victimization, it is not enough for the bully victim to act like a pussy to her tormentor. The bully victim has to feel compassion towards her; otherwise, she is in danger of becoming a bully herself, and the vicious cycle renews.

Consistent with the Christian indoctrination of, “If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also,” (Luke 6:29) the Taoists have this principle of the Wu wei, of non-action or non-doing. It is best illustrated by a glass of muddy water. The more you stir it, that is, the more you act upon it, the worse the situation becomes. Wu wei allows the mixture to sift itself with the mud at the bottom and the water on top; it lets things be (yes, like that Beatles song).

Active defensiveness is the mark of the guilty, and it betrays weakness, as far as the rest of the world is concerned.

There is no need to defend yourself when you know you’re right.

It is enough to know you’re right.

This knowledge alone is something to be grateful about but not to boast.