LIVING YOUR TRUTH
A reflection about standing up for what you believe in, and doing what feels right for you:
Even as a child, I’ve never been afraid to go against the crowd if my inner sense made me feel something wasn’t right or authentically ringing true. Even if I couldn’t always articulate it, I’ve always been able to see (know/feel, in my case) a bigger picture, that made some of the things we occupy ourselves with seem so very irrelevant or trivial at times.
One of my earliest memories of this was at the age of about 13, at the expensive, exclusive boarding-school I was privileged enough to attend for a few years, thanks to my father’s dedication to his job. It was declared by the Head Teacher that there would be an “Eat Rice for Charity Day” and the money that would be saved on the usual canteen meals (which to be frank, were often much worse than a good plate of rice!) would go to help the poor starving children in Africa. We were given a choice to participate or not. I chose not to. Something inside felt wrong about it, like it was an empty gesture, or for show, or that the money wouldn’t reach the people it was supposed to. (Also I feel we should be free to choose how we contribute to and help humanity, in our own unique way, which may help in more/different ways than other people might be able to imagine).
Anyway, it turned out that when they said we had a choice, they didn’t really mean choice. What they meant was that they would humiliate and make a scapegoat of anyone who chose not to participate, - which happened to be only me - by making me sit at a separate table alone for all 4 meals of that day, and feed me enormous portions of food, way more than they would usually serve, and way more than I could eat. But they wouldn’t let me leave any, as they pointed at me disapprovingly saying what a waste, when the starving children in Africa had nothing!
I didn’t like to say that by just lowering just one month of the school fees by 10% they probably would raise more money than this futile exercise…
I only lasted 4 years at that school And I still speak out against things that I see and feel don’t make sense for me. Even if some people still try to shut me down. I’m grateful to the ones who don’t, who understand that we are all free to express ourselves in ways that make sense to us.