Remember: Its only Illegal if it exceeds the Statute of Limitations and Laws regarding Reasonable Force!
Id blindly discourage you, but I find it more productive to just advise someone to Moderate their Outbursts
I'll go ahead and blindly discourage him.
Don't start fights. Don't use violence to solve your problems. Don't resort to violence until and unless you absolutely must.
I know it sucks. I know how much it hurts to be bullied. I was a fat ginger nerd. I understand the effects of bullying, on both sides of the coin. I was also a bully at times. I know the desire to dominate others with violence and to resist the domination of others with violence. It doesn't pay. Not where you are at.
Dipsticks punching you in the arm between classes is a problem with an expiration date. I know that day to day it seems like an unbearable frustration.
But it ends. You will move past this and life will get better. This kind of crap fades away. It's kid stuff. Be above it.
Kids push each other around. Sometimes it gets physical. Sometimes there's pushing and shoving and name calling. That's all part of kids learning how to interact. They get better at it as they get older. You will be exposed to it less. It never totally goes away, but you'll find your place.
If anyone tries to hurt you, I mean really hurt you, you must defend yourself. But there's a big difference between self defense and social violence. If you don't play, they'll find someone else who will. Telling the teachers won't help. If they were concerned about the teachers they wouldn't be bullying you to begin with. Telling the teachers makes you look weak, and looking weak makes you even more of a target. I know others will disagree with me here, but I can only speak from my own experience. Telling the teachers only got me suspended, ridiculed, and bullied further. You can stand up for yourself. You can be strong. But sometimes you also need to walk away. Most of the time you need to walk away. Walking away is safer and smarter, and not walking away, getting into a fight, will ruin your day every time. Win or lose. When violence becomes a part of your day everything goes sideways. You won't be going to your next class. You won't be hanging out with your friends after school. You will be hurt, suspended, in trouble with your parents, and the division between you and the bullies will be even worse. Violence is a bad solution that is only rarely the correct one. And even then it doesn't make things good, it only makes them less worse.
Walking away isn't always easy, but as you get stronger it'll get easier. Walking away is simple for me now, because I know that if a fight broke out it would end badly. Walking away is nothing once you've had thousands of fights in the karate school. Because you've been punched and kicked and thrown on the floor, and it's not nearly so scary, or enticing, as it seems when you don't know any better.
I can tell you that bullying is a sign of weakness. That's true. I can tell you that bullies try to make others feel small to make themselves feel bigger. That's true. I can tell you that bullies are cowards inside. But that won't make them go away. And it doesn't make them easier to deal with. Bullies suck. They aren't all evil. Sometimes it's hard not to be a bully when you're bigger than everybody else. But some of them are evil, or at least broken inside.
Try not to let them decide how you live. Sometimes we have to deal with things we don't like in life. But we choose how we react to those things. We choose how to live our lives. Not the bullies. They are sad little things, with nothing to create or enjoy. Go be something else. Be something interesting. Learn what subjects you love in school. Learn more about your TKD. Find a hobby and develop skills you enjoy. There will come a time when you see bullies for who and what they are, and you won't feel anything but sorry for them. For now, just get on with your life.
But please don't go around punching and kicking them in the face. Unless you absolutely have to defend yourself,
violence is not the answer. In the adult world, you will need more than punches and kicks to fix your problems. And you will have to spend
a lot of time with people you don't like. Your employers won't care whether you like your coworkers, they just want you to turn in your quota of widgets on time. Figure out how to make your enemies your friends. Practice changing people's minds with your words, instead of your fists. Those skills will serve you far better in life.
I'm a bad bad dude. I got mad karate skillz. But when someone in life says something hurtful to me, I can't drop a roundhouse kick on them. Learn a better way. Before you learn laziness instead. Once you resort to fixing your problems with violence, it can be very difficult to grow past that. And that won't work when you're older. It'll get you in a box. Dead or alive.
Learning people is harder than learning fighting. But there's a karate lesson your instructors should be teaching you about hard work. It pays. So do it.
-Rob
}, I was forbidden from the use of violence for religious reasons ... and fear of the good-hiding I'd get off my dad if he learned I'd been fighting.
