These were the two senarios that we were presented with, and we only had to choose one.
1. Have you ever been in the company of a group of which you were clearly not a member? What was the circumstance? How did you act? How were you treated?
2. Have you ever been part of a group of people who were unkind to one or some individuals? What was the circumstance? How did you act? What did you feel?
Well in my case I would choose number 2, as I have a particular experience that I would like to share.
Firstly before I write anything, I just would like to say that this story might be insulting to some people, and that I really mean no offense or whatsoever. So basically my experience takes place in primary school, when I was primary 3. During that time I was required to join the "TAF" club(Trim and Fit club) as I was overweight. I remember being one of the first ones there, so what we had to do was exercise during recess period.
Gradually when I primary 5, I lost quite a bit of weight and was only slightly overweight, so I could leave the TAF club the next year. During that time though, a lot of new people came in, and most of them were much, much more overweight than me. I remember there this particular primary 3 student(youngest among all of us), who was severely overweight. As a primary 3 student, he was already bigger than most of the primary 5 students. My first thought was, "How does somebody get so fat?" Of course that was me telling the truth, but after that I wiped that thought out and said to myself that, I was once fat too, and I had to help this primary 3 student.
Everytime during the TAF club sessions, this student would always be the last to finish his running laps, and at the end of it he would always be the laughing stock for everyone else. As I looked at his face then, what I saw was despair, anger and embarrassment. From that though, I could imagine myself being him, putting myself in his shoes, and I was like, nobody ever deserves to be treated like that. The fact that he is willing to keep on running and carrying on in the TAF club shows that he actually wants to lose weight, that he actually wanted to stop being picked on by everyone else. And typing this now as a sec 1, I all the more found out that it really wasn't his fault, as his body type was most likely an endomorph!
(A characteristic of an endomorph body type would be that they have difficulty in weight loss. For more information on endomorphs and other body types, check: http://www.bodybuildingpro.com/bodytypeinformation.html )
So after that I decided to first talk to that primary 3 student, and give him some advice on weight managment and loss. I also encouraged him to ignore what the others said, but just concentrate on doing what he thought was best for himself. At that point of time I could see that he was truly grateful to me, and I am glad I indeed went up to him and told him that.
A lot of times, I must say, children are suffering insults and humillation because of their traits. These traits are usually a result of their parent's traits. For example, eyesight problems, body weight problems and looks and appearance problems. A child that has parents that both wear spectacles is most likely to be wearing one soon too. A child with parents who are endomorphs(naturally fatter bodies), is likely to be overweight. Ugly parents never have good-looking children. The point here is to not to blame the parents, but I really wish to just wake up the society of students, of the teenages and children, that how someone looks and his outer appearance, do not determine his inner character. I used to get this question a lot in primary 3, " Eh Shaun, how do you become so fat? I eat and eat and eat but I still cannot become fat." When I hear that, in my heart all I feel is that it's not my fault that I was fat, but my parent's. Well of course a person who was born naturally fat could still exercise to lose weight and keep fit, which was exactly what I did, but some people simply don't and still get the same results!
Okay, looks like I am straying from the point. I hope that any person that reads this will realise that before you be judgemental, know that you are putting yourself in a superior position at the expense of others. This is extremely distasteful to me, and I detest(pardon my use of strong words) people who judge books by their covers. So I would like to end off saying that after all we are all equal and deserve to be treated the same, regardless of race, language, or religion, AND appearance!
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