Tolerant

Purple is my favorite color, is it yours?  Maybe you prefer blue or yellow or orange.  I can understand why you might like most colors, but, I will admit, there is a particular shade of green that I'm not fond of.  If it happens to be your favorite color, we can agree to disagree and talk about something else.  I think we can still be friends even if we don't agree on which color is best, don't you?

Favorite color is a fairly superficial topic of conversation, but the point is, you're entitled to your opinion.  I don't think anyone should ridicule you or think less of you because they don't agree with your choice.  It's a matter of tolerance, something that we seem to be sorely lacking, of late.

I read something over the weekend that made me incredibly angry and incredibly sad.  According to this article, there have been four teenage suicides at an Ohio high school, all of which were directly or indirectly the result of bullying.  Each case involved different bullies, but the underlying cause was the same, intolerance.

MENTOR, Ohio (Oct. 8) -- Sladjana Vidovic's body lay in an open casket, dressed in the sparkly pink dress she had planned to wear to the prom. Days earlier, she had tied one end of a rope around her neck and the other around a bed post before jumping out her bedroom window.

The 16-year-old's last words, scribbled in English and her native Croatian, told of her daily torment at Mentor High School, where students mocked her accent, taunted her with insults like "Slutty Jana" and threw food at her.

Suzana Vidovic found her sister's body hanging over the front lawn. The family watched, she said, as the girls who had tormented Sladjana for months walked up to the casket - and laughed.

"They were laughing at the way she looked," Suzana says, crying. "Even though she died."

Unthinkable, isn't it, that someone could be so intolerant of another human being that they would torment them until they took their own life.  And laugh about it.  It's not just teenagers, either.  Take a look at this item from a local news website:

TRENTON, Mich. - Her family says 7-year-old Kathleen Edward is in the final stages of a degenerative brain disorder diagnosed as Huntington's Disease - the same disease which killed her mother, Laura, when she was only 24.

Neighbors Jennifer and Scott Petkov, who have been feuding with the family, admitted to posting grim depictions of Laura and Kathleen on Facebook. One photo depicts Laura in the arms of the grim reaper, while the other features Kathleen's face above a set of crossbones.

The couple also have a coffin hitched to a pick-up truck in front of the house, which they say is nothing more than a halloween decoration.

There are less extreme examples that are still ugly.  In the comment section following an article on the economy, I was shocked at the name calling.  The terms "Democrap" and "Republican't" were rampant.  It seems that political bashing has become a pop culture sport.  Celebrities on one side are constantly bashing the President while those on the other side are constantly bashing anyone who doesn't support him.  You may think it has nothing to do with teenagers who bully or adults who torment critically ill children, but I think it does because it breeds intolerance.

If I were trying to solve a big problem and was instructed to choose a group of people to work on the solution with me, I would intentionally chose individuals with different points of view to encourage debate.  If we all posed the same idea, we would simply talk in circles and never make any progress.  Sometimes it's good to hear something you don't agree with.  It can inspire you to stick to your guns or motivate you to embrace a new ideology.                 

Don't get me wrong, I think you should stand by your beliefs and convictions.  You should think you're right or why have an opinion in the first place?  It's the unwillingness to tolerate anyone who doesn't agree with you that upsets me.  It's one thing to be passionate about something you believe in, but it's pompous and superior to think you're always right and anyone who doesn't agree with you is always wrong.  We can't all be right all the time, but we can all be tolerant of one another.

Willoughby