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We like to tell ourselves that offences come because other people are senseless, inconsiderate, rude lunatics; and while that is often true, it is also true that offences come because we are offend-able! Offences come because we have pride and selfishness and when someone does anything that so much as threatens our sense of self and pride, we are ready to wage war. Offences stick because they have something to stick to; there’s something within us that responds to them! Dead people cannot be offended because they have nothing to respond to the offences with. If you called a deaf-blind person the foulest name, they would carry right on because it does not register, it cannot stick. If someone cursed at you in a foreign language while smiling in your face, you wouldn’t be offended because you wouldn’t know that you had been insulted. What gives offences their innate power is our propensity to respond to them in the way that we do. It sounds easy and maybe even stupidly obvious, but it could really be a game changer.
What gives offences their innate power is our propensity to respond to them in the way that we do.
The truth is that we all feel like we are something special — and why not? We each have a unique set of finger prints and different taste buds and voices. Not to mention that each person’s DNA is different and no two humans are genetically identical, not even identical twins! Our sense of importance and uniqueness is not only a scientific fact but also social construct that has been erected over centuries, even millennia. We feel special, we feel like we are the ultimate, we feel like life is geared toward us. Our interests and desires are key. If humanity were the solar system then we are most certainly the sun! Nothing is more important than us — even the things to which we attach more importance are only given such positions of honour because of their direct link to us; for example, our children. They are special because they are OUR children.
The fact of our humanity is one which also renders a tendency toward self-magnification; we defer to points of view which favour us. However, the truth is that we are not as important as we think we are. To our loved ones and in our circle of influence, we might be irreplaceable but in the grand scheme of things, we are flowers on a hot summer day at best. We all carry the…
