No Room For Bullying In The Paranormal

Last week, the word ‘bullying’ came up prominently in my household as my little boy came home from elementary school, telling us that a boy had been hitting him.  My boy detailed how this other youngster in his class thought my son was weird, and was telling other children not to play with him.  Over the last three weeks my son was punched in the stomach, in the face, and kicked in the balls.  So, of course, we immediately thought bullying was happening to him.  As mortified and helpless as I felt, and I cried a few times about it, I wanted to find out the entire story.  The truth of the matter is there are three sides to every story.  There’s your side, my side, then the truth down the middle.  I always like to find the middle because that’s how we can heal issues, without resorting to insults or retaliation.  Now I’m all for my kid defending himself, if put in that situation.  My son has never thrown a punch in anger, which I’m thankful for.  We have rules for that.  But if he needed to defend himself, he’d have my full support.

Long story short, I found out that my son was eager to play with a group of kids that he probably shouldn’t be playing with.  That caused tension.  The boy who hit my son was and has been frustrated that my boy was continually trying to bud his way into games and playtime.  So out of that frustration, he hit my son.  In talking to the Principal and my boy’s teacher, I was able to find out a few things.  They were dealing with this as a class.  I found out my son is one of his teacher’s favourite students, which she claimed he is very intelligent.  Probably too intelligent for his age of seven.  He’s got a vivid imagination, which does hinder him sometimes, because he sometimes crosses reality with fiction.  But she stated he’s very popular in class, and is very participatory.  As parents, we always think the worst at times because the child’s actions reflect on the job the parents are doing at home.  But what a stress relief to know my son is doing well at school.  His teacher loves him.  Fellow students want to work with him and for us parents, we can feel safe that he is being taken care of at school.

So how does this all tie to the paranormal.  Well, in the paranormal there’s a lot of bullying, teasing, insulting, and hate spewed all over the place.  Doesn’t matter which field you’re in.  Ghosts, UFOs, Cryptids, Aliens, Intuitive, we see it everyday.  As adults, we should honestly be embarrassed by the way many of us are conducting ourselves on social media and towards other people and the way we are treating them.  That includes me, as I don’t want to think I’m preaching without understanding that at times, I have been part of the problem and not part of the solution.  It’s very easy to get caught up in drama and the ‘he said, she said’ game.  It’s very easy to spite others for their personality, or the way they look, or the way they investigate phenomenon.  Never mind the fact that daily we see women, people of colour, or of different sexual orientation harassed in this field by those who are too ignorant to know differently.

We see people bullying for territory, or for some sort of imaginary paranormal power for locations.  We see researchers in the cryptid world making fun of those who believe differently, because some are more ‘science’ than others.  We see people lying and stealing from others in order to try and get ahead because they want to be a name and authority in this field.  Why?  What is the purpose of all of this? Yes, I understand that working together, sharing locations and evidence, sharing ideas and thoughts without backlash is quite utopian.  But we, in this field, are our own worst enemies.  Can we change this?  Sure we can.  Some have tried.  The bigger names don’t care because where they are in their careers or research, they don’t have time for those who are more interested in dramatics than solving some of human kind’s most wonderful mysteries.

As a field overall, we need to be better.  We have to be better.  We must strive to improve our overall attitudes towards each other.  There will always be personality conflicts.  There’s no denying that.  But we all can take a step back and look for understanding, and the middle ground to move this field forward.  The paranormal has more popularity than ever, and keeps getting bigger and bigger.  More and more we see people wanting to learn and investigate to quench their curiosity, or help solve their own experiences.  We must let the new comers understand and learn properly that there are no answers in this field.  For the most part, there is no money.  The likelihood of getting a television show is slim to none.  As is a television pilot.  We must admit that we don’t know everything.  We are narrow minded.  We don’t know what’s truly going on.  We are all on assumptions and best guesses at this point.  There really should be no room for more than rational debate.  I wish this were true, but it isn’t.

It starts with one.  I’m committing to trying to improve myself, to help spread more positivity and rational discussion among the paranormal community.  I’m done with trying to lower someone else’s self esteem for my personal gain.  I’m done with seeing people hurting because they were ripped a new one for having a differing opinion.  I’m done with calling out the self-titlers and those who make themselves out bigger than what they are.  This is about focusing on me, and getting the best out of me, no matter where that takes me.  I can thank my son and his situation for teaching me this.  He’s the brave and tough one in my family.