Insults

Having previously mentioned the problem with ‘being offended’ it is time to move on to ‘insults’.

These two are closely linked. If you are insulted you may very well be offended. So here is my take on it, a mind set that developed from a very early age.

At Primary School in UK down in the far South-West of England where, at that time, sheep and cattle outnumbered human beings, the classes were split up into various factions.

These groups were basically decided upon by where you lived. The school was in one small village but it serviced other, smaller, villages in the area.

On top of that idea was also the strange sectioning of our own village. If you lived up by the Church you would be ‘Higher’ and if you lived down by the ‘Coop Store’ you would be ‘Lower’ village.

By some odd principle that I never did grasp, the people who lived in the ‘Higher’ part were superior to those who lived in the ‘Lower’ bit.

I was also at something of a loss to discover how the people in the ‘Middle’, near the school, fitted in with this. One family, who lived opposite the school, were really nice people – I socialised with one of the brothers later in life when we were all ‘Motorbike Mad’ and worked with one of the sisters in a local agricultural machinery company.

Now you have the background.

At playtime, one of the boys from a nearby village decided to call me some sort of horrid name and followed this by casting aspersions on my family. 

I was stunned into stupefied silence and went on my way.

That night, in the small hours, I tossed and turned all night fretting about my inability to respond to his taunt. Of course, all sorts of repartee occurred to me including what would almost certainly have been the ‘Parthian Shot’. All far too late, of course.

The next morning I dragged myself to school. I was tired, mentally weary and apprehensive about what the day would bring.

When I entered to playground, there was my supposed antagonist chatting happily with his friends with no regard for my presence at all.

He had forgotten all about it.

It was me that had suffered.

All night!

Lesson learnt. Those who insult you are casting a reflection upon themselves and not you.

Was his insult accurate? Was it true? Well, yes. In some way it was truth – particular the jibe about my family and that, in all probability, was why I felt such rancour about it.

The real lesson was that he was unaffected by his remarks leaving me to fret.

Since then you will find it very difficult to upset me with your words.

If your opinion of me is so low as to cause you to hurl vitriol or coarse epithets at me then I have no need to take it to heart since your opinion is, to me, worthless even if it is true.

If you are a close friend of mine then I will listen, because all my close friends are intelligent, so their opinion is worth listening to. I will not be upset because I value their thoughts and will, quite possibly, modify my behaviour accordingly.

Certainly, I shall not be awake all night, again, worrying about it.

It is for this reason that I laugh at the ad hominem arguments that are thrown about on social media. 

Just the other day I was referred to as a ‘P of cheeky shit’ because I asked the person making a comment if she had punctuation marks on her keyboard – it would have made interpreting her comment much easier had she used them!

I laughed. There is no point in getting worked up by undereducated idiots.

There’s the lesson for the day. Let it go. Life is too short* to worry about what other, stupid, people think about you. Be happy. Be happy NOW! Discard the negative and discover your own true worth.

I am a happy person because I admire me and know my true worth. That is not vanity – that is confidence; I do not hold with mock humility or modesty, if you are good at something then say so. The French would probably say 'amour propre', their version of 'conceit'.

Someone insults you then they are being rude. This gives you license to be rude back at them. They will not like it, of course. They will view your rudeness as a gross insult that will lead to escalation.

Let them worry about it.

Nil Ilegitimus Carborundum Est, as we used to say.

*Life may be too short but it is the longest thing you will ever know.