(This is for my speech class.. tell me what you guys think.. maybe this could make a difference here as well...)
Think about yourself in a social situation for a moment. Imagine talking to your parents, to some friends, to a teacher, or even just to a classmate about how hard that stupid test was in math! How comfortable are you? How well do you cope to different types of social environments? Can you talk to just about anyone? Or are you like many other people in the world who shy away for fear of being rejected? Now look at me and make an assumption of what type I am. Do you have your guess? I am the latter, the one who is afraid. Like many other people out there walking through the school halls, I get afraid of social interaction. I can’t maintain eye contact for long, and have passed out because of being around a big group of people. And this is what social rejection does to our world. This and so much more.
This world is filled with people who are rejected or ignored because of differences. People see others walking down the street and because they don’t wear the same clothes as them, or because they are a different race, they are made fun of, or walked away from. And it needs to be stopped. Social rejection deprives people of the four basic needs in life, which are a sense of belonging, control, self-esteem, and a meaningful existence.
Social rejection actually hurts as much as physical pain. A team of international psychologists have found that there are two key areas that respond to the pain of rejection the same as physical pain. At UCLA, they took thirteen students and did a series of tests by placing them on an interactive game. At first, they were let into the game and had fun, but the researchers slowly started making the game exclude the students. As it neared the end, the students were almost completely excluded from the game. This study showed that when rejected, the students had heightened activity in their anterior cingulate cortex, which is the region of the brain that is associated with physical pain. As you can see, psychological pain is more than just being in their head.
Social rejection also has been known to cause many problems in life and society, some serious, and then some not so serious. Some kids join gangs in their high school years because they feel the need to belong somewhere. They are in a dangerous environment, but they are happy because they are finally accepted. I, myself, don’t see this as winning though.
I have a friend out in Utah who was left out of many things in her life. We spent a lot of time together to escape the pains of our own households, but I eventually moved to my mom’s house and ended up in Ohio. We didn’t talk until this summer when I went out to visit and I found that she was being not only rejected at school, but at home too. She was teased constantly, people talked behind her back, her friends backstabbed her. Generally, she had no one she could trust, no one to turn to. So the week before August began, she messaged me online saying she was going to commit suicide. She took as many pills as she could find, told me how no one cared, and told me to call up her boyfriend Justin, whom she was having problems with, to tell him that she loved him and that she was sorry.
A more serious event that happened because of social rejection is the famous Columbine shootings. On April 20, 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris took guns to school to get revenge on everyone who had teased them. They made a video before they did it where they spoke about how they felt alone. They spoke of having low self-esteem and how kids teased them and left them out all the time. They felt their only way of getting back at those who rejected them was to kill them all. And unfortunately, more school shootings have happened since then for the same reasons.
We shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. That’s something we are told all through our life, but we never really listen to it, do we? People need to stop and take the time to get to know people instead of just turning away. You never know, they could be one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.
Everyone says that there is no way to change the world and how it thinks, but there are so many little things we can do to help stop rejection. For one, we can tell an adult when someone is being teased or bullied instead of just sitting back on the sidelines. We can ask someone who needs a friend if they want to hang out. We can even suppose someone who is a victim of rejection and show them they are not alone. But most importantly, we have to remember that everyone deserves respect.
Think about the kid back in middle school who would sit alone at lunch time, always keeping their head down and not starting a conversation with anyone. Imagine the thoughts running through their mind. They think they are along, that no one would notice if they died. Or even worse, they think that everyone else deserves to die with them. Don’t just stand back. Go and talk to them!
There was a girl back in Utah that I knew by the name of Sara. She was in my P.E. class and she was always alone. She would sit in the corner and read books or just watch the other kids playing the games or talking during any free time we had. She didn’t talk much in English either, and was very uncomfortable around people. But one day, I swallowed my fear, and walked up to ask her if she wanted to practice some free throws with me since I was on the basketball team. We spent the entire P.E. time playing basketball and talking. Sara was one of the sweetest girls I had ever met. She wrote poetry and had been through a lot like me. But most of all, she liked everyone as long as they were kind to others. She was too shy to speak, but she became a close friend of mine, someone I spent all of my time with at school before I moved.
Of course, changing won’t happen over night. I suppose in some ways, it won’t change at all. But imagine what could happen by just taking little steps to try and solve the problem. By example, we could teach tolerance and stop others from hurting people. In the long run, there could be less suicide and even fewer school shootings.
Rejection, bullying, teasing. They all create big problems in the world. Social rejection is just as painful as physical pain, and can lead to suicides. Rejection can also lead to school shootings as the Columbine shooting proved. Kids join gangs. They tease others, rape people, even kill people in order to be accepted into these gangs.
I challenge all of you to take the time to go up to someone who you always thought you could never be friends with and start a conversation. Start talking to someone who is different than you. Comfort people who are being teased and show them they have a friend. To think that the antisocial person sitting next to you in health or English could become one of your best friends.
As Socrates said, “There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.” Everyone deserves a chance before being turned away from. There are so many shy people out there who are misjudged and treated poorly. I have a social phobia myself, but that doesn’t mean I don’t yearn to be noticed and cared about.
Think about it. Make a difference. You might just find your best friend.
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