Opinions, Choices, Decisions.

“The Truth Shall Set You Free.”

Will it?

The NAZIs decided that ‘Arbeit Mach Frei’ and spelt it out over the entrance to the concentration camps.

‘Truth’ or ‘Work’.

Many people have concluded that ‘work’ is the curse of the drinking classes so, perhaps, it is alcohol that shall set you free.

You need work. Work is something that provides the necessary stresses and pressures – peer pressure and time pressure, to keep you going. It keeps your soul lit up; it motivates us so that we do things. We do nothing without motivation.

Opinions motivate us, too. Other people’s opinions. They shouldn’t but they do.

Many years ago a fellow said, to me, “You don’t like me very much, do you, Leyman?”

“No, you are completely wrong,” I told him, “I don’t like you at all.”

He was quite irritated by that.

It was, after all, the truth. Did I feel any more freedom for saying that? Not really. If I was completely honest I suspect that anyone who was slightly less insensitive than me might have regretted it.

What if someone says something like that to me?

Well, to be brutally honest, people say harsh things to me quite often. Must be part of that mystical allure I have for people who are intellectually challenged and socially barbaric.

Birds, as they say, of a feather...

The fact of that matter is that, for the most part, I don’t care what people say about me. This is because there are very few people whose opinion of me matters – to me. Thus I am able to just let it go. Let the insult or barbed words wing their merry way into the ether where they will die harmlessly.

It may be that they are right. I am ugly, fat, opinionated (oh, spotted that one did we?) and wrinkled up with advancing years. Being deaf, colour blind and, as previously stated, insensitive makes me a fair target.

Of course, there is always a truth in the idea that those who ‘dish it out’ must be prepared to ‘get it back’.

Sadly, there are too many people who cannot take a joke or insult without getting nasty about it.

Asimov (my hero) said that violence is the last resort of the incompetent.

He was, largely, correct.

Sometimes violence is the only answer. Sometimes violence is not the only answer but it is the only one that will satisfy the soul. Sometimes somebody will inflict so much abuse on another human being – physical and psychological, that the need to punish physically is so overwhelming satisfying that nothing else will take its place.

How do you decide?

Often there is no rational decision to make. Often the response is a gut feeling, a knee-jerk reaction.

The person inflicting the original violence is always innocent. Always.

We have a case here, now, in Malaysia where a husband is turning on the wife in such a cruel manner that there can be only one person to blame and yet the wife feels that she is to blame, that she is bringing all this down on her.

Of course it is not true, it is always the abuser’s fault.

For many, many years throughout my twenty-seven years in the military and the twenty-odd years since, I have seen this happen. I have seen abused persons in a marriage, having been given the opportunity to leave, not do so because they are still ‘in love’ or that the other ‘will change’.

It never happens.

One of my favourite young ladies, years ago was psychologically tormented by her husband but stayed with him for a long time before, eventually, calling it quits. Even then she admitted to still being in love with him.

This will tell you that there are situations in which ignoring the abuses or insults is not an option.

If I am insulted by someone close it hurts. Of course it does. The reality of that insult is that the person close to you knows you very well and so the insult is likely to be accurate and, worse still, true.

What are your choices in such a situation?

Our choices are always a result of:

The Things our Senses Tell Us

Previous Knowledge

Previous Experience

Expectation

Personal Goals

Context

But the decision that you make will be affected by other things including:

Knowledge of Geographical Location

Financial Status

Health

Probability of Success

Fear

So what do we have? We have a set of circumstances in which you are abused by a stranger or by someone close – a family member, perhaps.

The abuse from either party can be physical or psychological.

Your choice is how you react.

If a stranger or acquaintance insults you then you can choose to be angry or you can choose to be amused.

The choices when you are insulted by someone close begin to close in and become less obvious and less wide ranging.

Some years ago I worked in Sudan.

The poverty there was crippling and endemic. For many of these people their choice was limited to, “Shall I get up or just lie here and die?”

For them, choosing between cereals and pancakes for breakfast would be sheer luxury. They just hoped that there would be something to eat that day. Anything.

Tossing a few coins to the beggars was impossible because you would immediately be inundated by hundreds of open hands.

For them there were no choices. None.

Your opinion of them would be meaningless to them. When survival means scraping something out of the ground you have no care what others think of you. Pride is irrelevant.

Truth? Work? Alcohol? Not for them. Their truth is hand-to-mouth; there is no work and alcohol is forbidden – it would, very likely, kill them anyway. A merciful release? Unlikely.

Somebody asked me once, after I told him my neighbour was a hundred and five years old, “Who would want to be a hundred and five?”

The answer is, patently, “Someone who is a hundred and four, I expect?”

For some things there are no choices, decisions are out of your hands and into the hands of someone else although opinions vary on that, too.

Opinions, choices and decisions.

These are luxuries.

If you have them you are fortunate. Use them wisely and in a kindly manner or you become socially barbaric and intellectually incapacitated.

Just my opinion.