As humans we are naturally afraid of something, whether it be a spider, falling from a plane, snakes, and almost always death. But we all have one thing in common, how we judge people. When I was in elementary school I was known as the beast, because I was the tallest, and the most stout. Everyday groups of kids would run after me calling me beast and occasionally on those gloomy and rainy days, they would get me close to a hole full of slush and mud, then push. I’m not telling you this to get sympathy; I’m telling you this and hoping that you weren’t one of those kids.
The reason that most people do these outrageous things is because they look at people like me, and judge us on our looks and interests, and somehow what they think makes us unworthy of respect. • The first time this happened to me, I was told to “get over it “, as if it didn’t affect me, and I heard the same three words for the next 6 years. In 2014,the CDC reported that 40,600 suicides occurred , making suicide the 10th leading cause of death for Americans. In that year, someone in the country died by suicide every 12 seconds Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people, resulting in about 4,400 deaths per year, according to the CDC.
For every suicide among young people, there are at least 100 suicide attempts. Over 14 percent of high school students have considered suicide, and almost 7 percent have attempted it. I know this might be a cliché subject, and that there are many organizations trying to prevent bulling, but what I have yet to hear them say, is “don’t judge a book by its cover”. A simple term most likely used since the beginning of time, but never used to stop the root of the most basic problem.
Scenario I see a girl walking down my hallway at school; don’t think much of it or her. Later in the week some of my friends start to mention a girl who they refer to as a “the post it “, again I don’t think much of it or her. Later in the year, I begin a new semester, and a new dreadful Gym class. As the days go by there is this girl that I start to notice. Every class she most likely stays in the back of the room with her boy-friend, and some days she didn’t show up at all. A couple more weeks pass by and I hear the “post it” is in my gym class. I figure it’s the girl that is always in the back.
So I go to my class just like normal, but this time I can’t keep my eyes off her. All that was going through my head was things I could find wrong with her. Eventually I did make a friend in the class. And now the both of us were finding things wrong with the “post it”. Soon this person became an amusement item, and not a person. Until one day when the “post it” was there, but the boy-friend wasn’t. And I spent my day staring at a PERSON, on the verge of tears. I eventually got the courage to ask the girl if everything was okay. And she told me things that sounded more terrible then my Beast days.
And soon, everyday me and my friend engaged in a conversation with this girl we had always thought was the enemy. This scenario happens every day among elementary, junior high, high schools, colleges and is indefinitely the root of suicide among my age groups First I want to evaluate what makes us come up with unrealistic identity’s of people we don’t know. Second I want to explain how every human is made up of there experiences, and third I want to teach you the qualities of others and why you might want to take a second to get to know them.
Albert Einstein once said” It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity “. It’s no longer Mr. Rogers and the precious trolley that I grew up with, our technology has halted our imagination that the replacement for Mr. Rodgers is criminal minds. identities of others can be imagined in any place and any time, it is a relentless challenge to prevent the crude judgments from getting in the way of reality , especially in this generation. We as an advancing technological society are having to challenge our mind set, with every new upgrade and development.
For instance television is giving us situations that don’t seem realistic, like a group of people lost on an island, or a hospital full of steamy relentless employees, but no matter how farfetched they may seem we keep watching. We keep watching them because it gives up a certain outlook on the way we should act in society. And each generation has more prerogative and farfetched story lines. Next I want to talk about your experiences. For instance, when I was a child my mother and father got a divorce because my mother was abusing substances.
My mother was in and out of jail and in and out of my life until she became sober 3 years ago. And because of all her coming and going, the fear of abandonment was left as a defense mechanism to refrain from ever feeling that way again. Nursery world released an article witch said that “Researchers found that the higher the number of health-harming behaviours experienced in childhood, the more likely children would grow up to experience drug addiction and other damaging behaviours” witch explains why we judge people.
Think about it, we judge them off of the way they look whether they look dangerous or not, and whether they remind us of bad experiences. And if a certain person looks defenseless then we take advantage of the situation and judge them, to get rid of the negative feelings we have for ourselves. Another factor could be that our experiences put up defense walls to stop the same pain feeling from happening again which is why we choose to bully others and judge others, to stop them from getting close to us and “ hurting” us again. This whole story was to explain how everyone has something to offer.
Every single person has something that makes them unique and studies show that a socially active life with a range of personality keeps you brain stimulated. So why chose people who seam normal, to socialize with. Why not take a chance on the girl sitting alone in the corner, because who knows she may end up to be Angelina Jolie, or the next Eminem. So what you should take away from this entire speech, is that your perception and your judgment are not allway telling the truth and that taking a chance on the star wars fanatic may lead to a killer game of jedi vs droid.
