San Jose Meditation – I Wonder If I Was Really Bullied?
Hyemyung Baek / MIlpitas, California / Office worker
Since I was a child, I have generally taken the safe route. The same was true for friendship. I listened to my friends’ opinions rather than insisting on my opinions to avoid conflicts as much as possible. The academic competition grew fierce as we went up to middle school, and all the children began to form factions. It was hard to make friends if I wasn’t in a group, but I didn’t belong to any group and only went to study because I was afraid I’d be pulled into one and then get badly lectured by my mom.
I’m an outcast! When I was in middle school, I hated everyone.
Among the students in my class, I became an incomprehensible child, and if classmates had any questions while studying, they would come and ask, but no one came near me as a friend. Seeing such “friends”, I, too, slowly closed my heart and sometimes didn’t answer my friends’ questions. Maybe that was the cause of the fire. Discontent, my friends started talking and teasing me behind my back.
I was bullied, and there were no kids who really thought of me as a friend. Two friends began to make fun of me with all their heart. It was a shock!
I resented everyone around me from my mom who was nagging me to study to my friends who were giving me a hard time. But as I finished middle school and went up to high school, the bullying situation came to an end.
It was only then that I comforted myself telling myself there would be only good things going forward. But that middle school experience had become a trauma. I was scared of having relationships with people because of the anxiety that someone might bully me again, and I was afraid of what to do if I were to coincidentally run into them. Every time I felt that, I said to myself, “They were jealous because I was better at studying than them, so those kids were worse off. So, let’s just move on and live.” I thought that was forgiveness.
Was I really bullied or not? After throwing away my minds, I looked back on things objectively.
Then by chance I came across a friend who had been bothering me for 10 years. I had “forgiven” him from my heart, so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to meet him, but that was merely my delusion. The moment I saw that friend, I was filled with resentment and anger.
But he was the opposite of me, having good feelings for me, and he seemed really glad to see me. Frankly, at that moment I didn’t know what to do. Far from forgiving, I was the one who had the hatred intact. Ten years later, that child was still my enemy.
That friend told me that we should keep in touch, but I wasn’t confident enough to accept the offer. After that, I thought a lot. I had thought my friend was wrong, but then questioned maybe it was me who was wrong. I wondered and wanted to understand this mysterious situation of looking at the same incident from different perspectives.
At that time, I began to meditate and brought up the incident that had remained in my mind and tried to throw it away. At first, I was very angry at the thought of the incident. But as I threw it away and abandoned it, I could increasingly get away from “me” and objectively look at “me and my friends” of my middle school days.
I’m sorry to my friends for being so inferior and making my self an outcast.
Come to think of it, he was a good friend. Maybe at that age that was just his way of trying to get my attention because he felt sorry for me being alone. Maybe. For him, such teasing was a common prank between friends, and maybe only I considered that as bullying because of my own inferiority complex?
I was so sure that he was the bad guy and I was the poor victim, but the more I practiced meditation, the more I recognized I wasn’t. I have believed myself to be a good person living righteously, but I came to realize how arrogant that thought was. How many people have I hated in my heart, even if I didn’t show it or take any real action. The world is however always just like the sun: allowing us to breathe, embracing everything, and forgiving everything. The biggest beneficiary of that forgiveness was myself. The moment I truly forgave, the world began to look peaceful.
I had thought that the world was making it difficult for me, but in fact it was the opposite, the world was accepting me as I was. I’ve learned that forgiveness is about accepting an opponent as he is, as the world has done for me. I was ashamed. I’m not the one to forgive anyone. I’m the one who should be asking for forgiveness. It was only after such sincere penitence to the world that I could truly pray for my friend’s happiness. A complete peace has come to my heart.
