By Hala Al-Qahtani
Al-Watan
SOME people will not tell their opinion and will not express what is in their minds with sincerity. Instead they would repeat the opinion of others even if they don’t agree with them. They often take such a stand to express a strange or an odd opinion.
When they face a disapproving look from their friends they would say it’s nothing but diplomacy. At the same time such people would know well that they have been caught up in disgrace and wish that they should have expressed their right opinion instead of cheating people who believe in their honesty and integrity.
These people often say that they don’t know how to lie in a professional way and convince themselves that their approach was smart. At the same time, they should know that their silence and hesitation to tell the truth over and over again was a reason for creating new tyrants.
By opposing wrong thoughts and ideas you contribute to correcting wrong concepts and you join the group of individuals trying to bring about positive change in society instead of bringing it backward. We should express our views boldly without fearing criticism.
Are you ready to face criticism when you take a rightful stand or do you want to remain a coward who always tries to appease others and protect their vested interests? By adopting the second stand you continue to cheat yourself to get a respite from criticism.
If you take a bold stand on an issue, some people will not like you and they will keep on talking against you but this criticism would continue for long. Your previous stances have taught you how to be like them. For example, when you were a child and left playing among your relatives, you may get a feeling that the elders did not care for you properly and did not feed you in the absence of your parents and they did not give you sweets when it was distributed among their children.
When your parents return and you wanted to explain what had happened in their absence and how you were mistreated by the relatives they will consider you as a problematic child because your open and frank criticism would cause embarrassment to your relatives. Instead of scolding the relatives your father will rebuke you or accuse your mother of over coddling.
You have not done anything wrong and you were telling the truth frankly but this negative response of parents and relatives would encourage you to tell lie whenever such incidents occur in the future to avoid provoking your parents and receiving punishment.
At school the teacher will ask students to raise their hands if they did not understand the lesson or if they have any doubts. If you raise your hand you may probably face the teacher’s irrational response that would shock you. Instead of explaining what you did not understand, the teacher would rebuke you for not listening to the class attentively.
When you try to justify that you raised the hand on the teacher’s request, you may face further rebuke and you would be accused of showing disrespect. Although you have not done anything wrong you have violated the usual trend at the end of the class when the teacher would ask students to raise hands if they have doubts but nobody would do it fearing backlash.
You just shake your head like others to tell the teacher that everything was fine, even if you did not understand the lesson. By raising hand you make a vague accusation that the teacher was not capable of explaining the lesson properly. Most people do not consider going out of the herd culture as independence or a new viewpoint but as a declaration of rebellion.
Teachers with a negative attitude would punish students who raise questions by reducing their marks and grades.
When you get a good job after going through difficulties on the basis of your academic certificates and work experiences, you are forced to follow the existing pattern at the work place to appease presidents and vice presidents and do whatever possible to feed their egos. You would be lucky if you find at least two of these top officials without having a position syndrome.
Despite the skills you have learned and training courses attended you would not be able to achieve your goals and promotions unless you learn how to show different faces and change them smoothly to satisfy your superiors who know well that you are under their control.
No matter whatever you try to avoid fight there will come a day when you will be pushed into one conflict. So make sure to be brave when confronting such a situation as some battles would not accept defeat. Be yourself whatever be the situation and protect your identity. Remember when you give up your values and life etiquette people will not respect you.
