Heaven? Quite frankly, I don't want to go to a Heaven that is filled with hypocrites. God, Allah, Jesus, Buddah, or whoever you are that makes that decision, I won't be offended if you send me to Hell along with all the other non-believers who never claim to be anything they aren't. At least I will be in the company of souls who admitted openly to their wickedness. Far better than hanging out with people who cowardly believe that you can be free of your sins if you just, what's the word? CONFESS! Ah, yes, confess to your wickedness, and ye shall be forgiven, and ye shall get to spend a lifetime in eternity with those who wore crosses around their necks and yet comitted such sins as adultery, jealousy, gluttony, blah blah blah blah blah. But, you only have to confess to your priest. You don't even have to confess to the man you are cheating on, or the mother of the little girl you moslested. But, why were you committing sins or acts of wrongdoing in the first place? The thing is, if, in this mortal life, you're going to wear a cross around your neck and imply that you are holier than I because you believe in a Power of which I am still unsure, you best be practicing what you preach, otherwise, you are a hypocritical fool. And an idiot. Hey, I never profess to be what I am not. I am a self-confessed glutton, and if unashamedly committing (daily) acts of gluttony and being openly unsure of what or who I should believe in assures me a place in Hell, so be it. Anyway, I really don't want to be anywhere near a place where I am surrounded by a bunch of suicide bombers and their 77 virgins. Each. One can only imagine the nightly entertainment.
I should quickly mention that a handful of my closest friends are incredibly religious. Like, still-being-a-virgin-at-30-due-to-not-being-married type of incredibly religious. And they are really some of the purest people that I know. If only every person with strong religious beliefs were as pure. My best friend believes that he may be going to Hell because he is gay. And yet, he is a good person with a good heart. Isn't that what is most important; what he should be judged on in the end?
Speaking of judging, I have recently been attempting to understand politics a little more by reading The Week magazine, which compiles the best articles from all over the world from the previous week. Unfortunately, I'm starting to think that I am missing a few circuits in my brain, because I still have trouble making sense of who is who and what is what and what the friggin problem is with raising taxes on the uber rich. A couple of things I think I understood: the board that decides a woman's right to have an abortion is made up of solely men, and in attempting to provide health insurance that covers contraception from Catholic-affiliated schools, hospitals, and charities, which the Catholic church considers immoral, the government is taking away religious freedom. Am I missing something here? I very well may be; as has already been noted, I may be a few circuits short of a brain that can handle these sorts of arguments. Because, it sounds to me that, as a woman, my choice of whether I keep a baby or not is decided by a bunch of men, and that my Catholic counterparts are encouraged by their church to have unprotected sex (because, let's face it: no ban on contraception is going to stop people from having sex). Having lived in England where the pill is free, I am shocked that this is not the case in the States. It's bad enough that women have to pay for tampons (don't get me started -- we endure a monthly mentruation and HAVE to pay for it??), but pay for birth control? I hear that the morning after pill runs about $50. You think many of the men in that situation offer to help the woman pay for that? I don't. Isn't protecting a woman's health as important as protecting her religious beliefs? I won't even ask about protecting a woman's choice. The thought that it is "protected" by a bunch of dudes who would probably be useless in the delivery room makes me want to vomit.
In the hearts of the right people, religion flourishes beautifully. In the hands of the wrong people, it is suffocating. Society and people change. To attempt to keep people in line with out-of-date beliefs must be a very challenging job, and I don't envy the people that choose to do this job. However, I do resent them, because I think everyone, myself included, deserves the opportunity to make their own choices without fear of being judged. It has been my experience that those who do the preaching and judging are usually the ones who have the darkest secrets. Maybe even the blackest code of ethics.
I haven't made up my mind yet about what I believe in spiritually. And I eat too much. And I use contraception. If this means that I am "doomed" to Hell, despite a daily awareness to be a good person, then I will be driving the bus with (fiery) bells on. Judging by the company, it could turn out to be alot...cooler...down there. Forgive me my sins of bad punning. I just had to.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
A Lesson On Ethics In Others
I have always, at the least, held firmly to, and at the most, acted unapologetically for what I believe to be right, even when the majority of my peers and colleagues have either disagreed, been too scared, or, worse, too indifferent to act. Happy is the man, I guess, who stays silent and quietly waits for every event to pass him by so that life can remain placid. Or perhaps it is that same man who blasts his opinions in the safety of his home, but, when given an opportunity to voice them aloud, shys away. I am not that (wo)man. An incident occured at work recently where I spoke out and fought against the majority to do the right thing. By my strength-of-steel moral and ethical standards, I did what was right. The result: I have been blackballed, mocked, and even mildly bullied. I have reflected on the incident for days and though I have tried very hard to understand all points of view, I just cannot make sense of what has happened, or the repercussions.
I won't go into detail about the incident, as I may end up in some officer's detention room should management ever see this. Briefly described, there was an unprovoked physical attack on a friend (Dan from Indiana, who you can read about in the blog entry before this) by another colleague which resulted in my calling security and gathering a couple of people (one being a guest) to make statements on what they had seen. I certainly admit to losing my temper. When Dan, shaking and dazed, approached me to tell me of the attack, I literally saw red, lost my temper, and acted without thinking. I assume that most people reading this, if they were in a similar situation where a friend or family member was hurt, would follow suit. However, according to the majority of my colleagues, I acted wrongly, because my calling security may have resulted in the attacker's loss of his job. Did anyone ask if Dan was okay? Nope. All they were concerned about was whether or not this other man would be fired. People went so far as to say, "Dan is drunk and melodramatic." Fact: Dan was attacked. Whether he was drunk or not has no bearing on this. Fact: Dan was attacked. Physical contact was not a a fictitious event in Dan's supposedly melodramatic mind.
"We are a family, and we have to keep our family together," is what I kept hearing. Firstly, I understand that the word "family" is synonymous for "team," but I resent others telling me who I should be referring to as my "family." I have one amazing family, no more, no less, and they are certainly not on this ship. Secondly, in my real family, no one ever lays a hand on anyone else (apart from when my Mom was raising stubborn twins and had to show us that whining had consequences). Try as I might, I honestly cannot understand how an attack was made, where the man who made the attack has not been questioned by his peers, while these same peers have deemed Dan and I, the ones who reported to security, monsters. I have racked my brain to think whether any man in my life would ever touch someone aggressively, and the answer is, ABSOLUTELY NOT. No friggin' way, man. My best friend, Mark, was assualted on public transport a few years ago, ended up having to have nose surgery, and he was still barely able to lay a finger on anyone, even in self defense. I do believe that Dan's attacker felt remorse, and perhaps it is this remorse which everyone thinks is the reason the incident should be swept under the carpet. Though, I keep wondering how others would have reacted in my position. When I questioned a couple of them, they replied that that they would make light of the situation. My response: too bad for their friends. Friends always support and protect each other, not just when it is convenient.
In the aftermath of the incident, these are phrases that have been said to me, verbatim:
"Everyone hates you."
"You would sabotage my audition."
"You're the reason for the chasm between the cast."
"You think you're so much better than everyone else."
"Every time you say something to someone, you make them feel bad about themself."
"You're the biggest bully in the cast."
I am not making myself out to be the victim, by any means; I would never want to be perceived as a victim. While hearing these verbal attacks shocked me, they did not hurt me, because I know that I am not these things. So, I am not hurt, I am just so incredibly disappointed. At humanity, at my peers, at everyone who never bothered to ask Dan if he was hurt, at everyone who never bothered to question the attacker, at the attacker for letting me and Dan take his fall when we did everything we could to prevent the loss of his job, at the fact that, in doing what I believe in my heart to be the right thing, I have become a person that most of the people I work with hate. I am not looking for sympathy or support, but a way to understand how how HOW something like this has happened in the way that it has. I don't know how long my disappointment in humanity will last. The more time passes, the more disappointed I become. It is a sorry state in society when the majority support wrongdoing.
In hindsight, would I have acted differently? I have asked this of myself alot, and the answer is a stoic, "no." If I could change anything, I would have let Dan's attacker make his apologies before calmly calling security, but I still would have made the same choice. We owe it to ourselves to do the right thing, no matter how negative the consequences. It is a damn shame that doing what is right can have such negative results.
I won't go into detail about the incident, as I may end up in some officer's detention room should management ever see this. Briefly described, there was an unprovoked physical attack on a friend (Dan from Indiana, who you can read about in the blog entry before this) by another colleague which resulted in my calling security and gathering a couple of people (one being a guest) to make statements on what they had seen. I certainly admit to losing my temper. When Dan, shaking and dazed, approached me to tell me of the attack, I literally saw red, lost my temper, and acted without thinking. I assume that most people reading this, if they were in a similar situation where a friend or family member was hurt, would follow suit. However, according to the majority of my colleagues, I acted wrongly, because my calling security may have resulted in the attacker's loss of his job. Did anyone ask if Dan was okay? Nope. All they were concerned about was whether or not this other man would be fired. People went so far as to say, "Dan is drunk and melodramatic." Fact: Dan was attacked. Whether he was drunk or not has no bearing on this. Fact: Dan was attacked. Physical contact was not a a fictitious event in Dan's supposedly melodramatic mind.
"We are a family, and we have to keep our family together," is what I kept hearing. Firstly, I understand that the word "family" is synonymous for "team," but I resent others telling me who I should be referring to as my "family." I have one amazing family, no more, no less, and they are certainly not on this ship. Secondly, in my real family, no one ever lays a hand on anyone else (apart from when my Mom was raising stubborn twins and had to show us that whining had consequences). Try as I might, I honestly cannot understand how an attack was made, where the man who made the attack has not been questioned by his peers, while these same peers have deemed Dan and I, the ones who reported to security, monsters. I have racked my brain to think whether any man in my life would ever touch someone aggressively, and the answer is, ABSOLUTELY NOT. No friggin' way, man. My best friend, Mark, was assualted on public transport a few years ago, ended up having to have nose surgery, and he was still barely able to lay a finger on anyone, even in self defense. I do believe that Dan's attacker felt remorse, and perhaps it is this remorse which everyone thinks is the reason the incident should be swept under the carpet. Though, I keep wondering how others would have reacted in my position. When I questioned a couple of them, they replied that that they would make light of the situation. My response: too bad for their friends. Friends always support and protect each other, not just when it is convenient.
In the aftermath of the incident, these are phrases that have been said to me, verbatim:
"Everyone hates you."
"You would sabotage my audition."
"You're the reason for the chasm between the cast."
"You think you're so much better than everyone else."
"Every time you say something to someone, you make them feel bad about themself."
"You're the biggest bully in the cast."
I am not making myself out to be the victim, by any means; I would never want to be perceived as a victim. While hearing these verbal attacks shocked me, they did not hurt me, because I know that I am not these things. So, I am not hurt, I am just so incredibly disappointed. At humanity, at my peers, at everyone who never bothered to ask Dan if he was hurt, at everyone who never bothered to question the attacker, at the attacker for letting me and Dan take his fall when we did everything we could to prevent the loss of his job, at the fact that, in doing what I believe in my heart to be the right thing, I have become a person that most of the people I work with hate. I am not looking for sympathy or support, but a way to understand how how HOW something like this has happened in the way that it has. I don't know how long my disappointment in humanity will last. The more time passes, the more disappointed I become. It is a sorry state in society when the majority support wrongdoing.
In hindsight, would I have acted differently? I have asked this of myself alot, and the answer is a stoic, "no." If I could change anything, I would have let Dan's attacker make his apologies before calmly calling security, but I still would have made the same choice. We owe it to ourselves to do the right thing, no matter how negative the consequences. It is a damn shame that doing what is right can have such negative results.
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