Grow Up (that's a command)

You know how in school there were bullies, the ones who get your lunchbox or steal your lunch money?

I was on the balancing beam. I had friends from the popular clique and had friends who are not the "IT" people. Highschool was that. I survived on wits and finding equilibrium.

I was able to get into a prestigious university for college. I thought all the cliques and bullying was finally over. In the university I went to, people only cared for themselves. It is survival of the fittest minus the backstabbing. It was a university that regarded intellectual honesty as one of its core values. People (mostly) were honestly fighting their way through undergrad (though some may have used tears, connections, etc. to get their way). There were rich kids, poor kids, frat boys, sorority girls; there were parking lot fights, misunderstandings and debates on ideology, principles, and sometimes, their favorite actors. But during the course of my stay in that university. I don't think I've witnessed the classic bullying we all know of.

And so, I faced the real world and stepped into the corporate scene brave to know that all those "Highschool never ends" and bullying shit happen only in the movies, or books; and that people in the real world of adults are mature enough, if not professional enough, to act in accordance to decorum.

But it's not. With the dawn of the social-network-TMI-lifestyle, this became worse. Covert bullying and explicit alienation.

Often I witness this and take the moral high ground by ignoring them. If it's too rampant and is affecting my mood on a day-to-day basis, I unsubscribe/unfollow/unfriend. Sometimes, if it irritates me too much already, or I felt provoked, I tend to play fire with fire.

But to the people who does this on a daily basis. What do you get out of it? A false sense of superiority? Delusion of grandeurs and megalomania, does it make you feel better?

But really, when you think about it, when you dissect the core. Why would you care so much about other people? Much so, the people are not celebrities who have decided to put their lives on the open and public scrutiny to be talked about? What will you get out of it? If it causes you pain, ignore it, otherwise, you're just making the flame so much stronger; and extinguishing the hate in your gut will be so much more difficult.

For me, it illustrates an underlying insecurity. People who are never happy with themselves and their lives – they have nothing better to talk about and nothing better to do. No tales nor anecdotes to share with friends and other people in general; and in effect, you talk about other people. Idle hands are the devil's playground -- a phrase I learned early in grade school after watching that Devon Sawa film. If people are busy and living lives interesting enough, they'd share about their experiences; and not dwell on envy and hate for others.

Grow up. Stop thinking that the world spins around you. If you do that, you'll start minding your own business and just let other people be, too.