On Love and Tolerance, and on Hating the Vice, Not the Person...

Hi, everyone! I submitted my midterm paper for a philosophy class that I'm taking this semester today, and now I can say that I'm done with all the midterm stuff! Yes! And that is why I can have a time to sit down, and face my laptop like this right now. I don't have to feel like I need to study, and I don't have to feel guilty for not studying, and not banging my head again books and notebooks. Oh, I do love reading books, though. lol

So today, I am going to write about things that have been sitting on my mind for a while. It is about love and tolerance. Why have I come to think about these 2 things lately? Well, it's because I watched a YouTube video by Jeffree Star (I hope I spelled the name correctly!), and that made me think. I love watching his videos, and his works of art; I love watching him talking, and being who he is. I am subscribed to his channel, and have enjoyed following him on the Internet. I think he is so beautiful, and I also love his personality from what I can see through his videos. I have never met him in person, so obviously, I can't say I know everything about him, but at least to me, he seems to be really open-minded, honest, and nice.

Recently, he uploaded a video which is titled "racism" on his channel. In that video, Jeffree talks about his past and the mistakes that he has made along the way. He says that he had always struggled to find his place in the world, and that he had always harbored rage and anger because he couldn't find peace in his mind back in time. People would say the nastiest things to him, because he didn't look like most of us. And he acknowledges that there were times when he fought back with nasty words as well. He then continues to admit that it is wrong to fight back nasty words with a bunch other nasty words, but back in time, he knew nothing better. He says he wish he could erase and fix all those mistakes, but as you know, nobody can do anything about what has already happened. Although he had made mistakes, and flashed offensive remarks in the past, those things does not represent who he is now. He is very sorry for firing those words to people, and attacked people back. And he added that it's sad for him to see those clips from the past, and see people still use them to mock him, and to try to degrade him. Nobody's perfect, and we're all just a small human being at the end of the day, and he says that he knows that, and he's a person who tries to be better just like us. And he isn't the same person as he was 10 years ago, and he sends out a message that he wants to set an example, and wants people to learn from his mistakes.

So, that was what was said on his video, but what you read isn't what Jeffree exactly said. You got some bits of information about the video through my words, and that's not exactly the same as watching the video yourself. So go watch the video. It's always better to check out the source when you can.

Alright, so from this paragraph, I'll write about what I thought after watching the video. Here we go. You know, it's easy to love what you love. Love is easy when you are fond of the person, of the object, or even the idea. It's so easy to love the things that look pretty and beautiful in your eyes. But you cannot say that you know the truly meaning of love when you can only love things that you love. The true meaning of love lies in loving and showing respect to even the things you don't like. There are so many things, people, ideas, etc., in this world. And you don't have to like every single one of them. Of course, you can have your opinions. A thing is not for everyone. I always try to be open-minded as much as possible, but I cannot promise you that I am going to love everything. I can't agree with every opinion from every single person. It's okay to have an opinion, and dislike things. But things get pretty messy when you try to exclude things you don't like.

Sometimes you may bump into a person, an object, or an an idea that goes beyond your comprehension. I think LGBT or boys wearing makeup can be classified in this category (for some people). Please keep in mind that I love seeing boys wearing makeup, and I do follow male makeup artists on social media to see their amazing works. And although I am a straight girl who dates a boy, I am a supporter of the LGBT community. Nobody should be ashamed of who they are, and nobody should be judged by their sexuality. LGBT people aren't abnormal, and they're not sinners either. They're human beings who celebrate love like anyone else. In recent years, more and more people have become aware of the need to break boundaries, and we've witnessed some amazing progress. But things were not always like this in the past. The backlash against the LGBT community must have been much more severe. I think that it was hard (or even impossible) for people to understand the concept of LGBT back then, when all people were supposed to be heterosexual. But you need to know before hand that sometimes things that are beyond your comprehension happen or exist, and that's okay. It's easy to get scared of things you don't really understand. People feel uneasy when they cannot find a category for an object; people do not like uncertainty.

But even if you don't like a person, an object, or an idea, that person, that object, and that idea have a reason to exist. You may hate a particular person for some particular reasons. But you don't need to treat the person accordingly at all. You can still treat the person with respect, and acknowledge him/her as one of the members of the society, and as the same human being. And that's the definition of tolerance, isn't it? No, it's different from faking your emotion. If you think tolerance is about faking your emotions, and having to say that you like them when you feel the opposite, you haven't learned what tolerance actually is. Tolerance is about being okay with things you aren't really familiar with, accepting them, and acknowledge their full right to be there. Tolerance is not an emotion; it's a choice, and it is a will. Love can be the same too. Love is not just about loving the ones you love. Love is not just about loving the lovable aspects of a person, it's also about loving the person as a whole, including the flaws. Love is not just about loving a person when you want to; it's about keep working hard to strengthen the love and the bond between you and that person even during the hardest time. Love is not an emotion either; it is a will.

Ok, now let's talk about this: hate not the person but the vice. The next time you feel like trying to degrade and disgrace Jeffree, or any other people because of what they did in the past, try to think about this: do you want to do so because you hate the action, or because you hate the person? It should be hard initially, to draw the line between these, especially when you're the very person who was attacked and offended by the person in question. But eventually, you'll need to move on. It may be tough to hear this, but you cannot get satisfied by continuously blaming the person. I know it's not easy, but you need to try to blame the action instead, especially when the person is apologizing to you, and learning the lesson. You can't justify the act of firing racist words, but I think Jeffree should be also allowed to explain his circumstances, and defend himself. It's not fair to take out a bit of information without examining the whole context, and just blame him. And to all those people (most of whom do not even know Jeffree personally, I guess...) who talk and write shit about Jeffree, you do so not because you want to inform people, and to bring justice, but because you simply hate him, and you love humiliating him. You just love finding fault with him.

I love memes. They're mostly funny and enjoyable. But some of them are rather nasty and mean. When I first saw the meme that says something like, "If Donald Trump is drowning, would you save him?" I was shocked. I saw so many people commenting that they would not save him. This is disgusting. Some may say that they were saying no as a joke, but that joke is not funny at all. Well, I do not agree with what he says, and I'm not a hands-down Trump supporter. But if he was actually drowning, I would make an action to save him. Even if we may not agree with each other on different topics, he's a human being just like me. I mean, it doesn't have to be President Trump; it can be anyone. Those then-kids who bullied me...Yeah, I would save them. Why? Because I don't hate them anymore. I just hate what they did to me. It's impossible to forget how hurt I was back then, and what I had gone through in the past. I will never forget the pain and the loneliness that they made me feel. But that doesn't make me go and revenge on them. I won't justify their action, but I know how bullying works. I confess that it took a while to come to the state of mind where I am now. But eventually, I learned not to hate them but to hate the action. You should try to do the same. Hate not the person bu the vice.

So there you have it. This is what I have been thinking about lately. Oh, yes, I know. Nobody asked me to write these things, and like I said, I've never met Jeffree personally. And making this kind of post can be taken as interfering and nosy. But I love writing and writing helps my thoughts to be clearer and more organized than they're just floating around inside my head. And I just didn't like keeping my mouth shut when I have some words to say. I just didn't like to remain silent when I can see those mean tweets or comments directed to him. You can decide for yourself whether you like this post or not. Even if you dislike what I wrote, there's nothing I can do. I can offer, but I can't force you. And that's how things go. If you happened to stay with me till this moment, thank you for reading my post. English is my second language, so it must have been hard sometimes to make sense of what I wrote. lol Lastly, I want to thank Jeffree for letting us explore the world of makeup with you through your videos. And thank you for being honest and trying to be as open as possible to us. You are strong, and you will keep shining by being you. I will always be excited to get to know more about you, and hearing your words.

Let's Exile Physical Punishment!

Hi, everyone! It's already the middle of June! The first half of 2017 is about to fly away! How's everyone been doing? As some of you might know, the rainy season has started in Japan. In Japan, June = the rainy season. But we haven't had much rain as far as I can remember! How weird is that?! lol Moreover, it is repeated again and again on the weather channels that the air is so dry! We're in the rainy season, but the air is dry? Like winter? How can this kind of thing even happen? I almost have no knowledge about the science of weather, so this is very mysterious to me. If anyone can explain what is going on, please do!

So, in this article, I am going to write about my past... My not-so-fun side of my past. And it is about my home that I grew up in. This can be a very personal post, and if you're not interested, I do understand that. But if you find this article worth reading somehow, then please keep reading! Thank you. 

My mom was (and perhaps still is?) very strict. Very strict. Yes, I understand why she had to be strict. Parents are not friends. And raising a child is not always easy, and can be pretty tough. You need your child to do things by themselves. The child needs to be able to live by his/herself in the future. The child needs to be a decent adult, and know what's right and wrong. The child needs to have self-discipline. The kid needs to study and learn things. Sometimes, the child has to go through hard times so that they can learn that working hard and being patient pay off. Yes, I understand all of these. 

But, kids, too, need a break from time to time. I wrote that parents aren't the friends of their kids. But sometimes, they need to be their friends. Well, I wished that my parents had been willing to be my friends sometimes, at least. They never were my friends. Even worse, I have never really trusted my parents. Yes, my parents did raise my up, and they are the ones who paid for all of the things I needed in my life, such as education. They fed me, secured a house that I can live in, worked hard to earn money so that I can go to school, etc. I know she has always wanted to do her best to raise me up, and wanted me to be the best that I can be. She was a perfectionist. Well, it's not totally a bad thing to be a perfectionist. But sometimes it can be a bad thing, especially when you're rubbing your version of perfection on your kids face, ignoring what they feel inside. 

When you're raising a child, you cannot just keep smiling all the time. You need to expose your scariest face sometimes, in order to let your child know that he/she is not supposed to do what they are doing. You need to scold your child sometimes, you know? Again, your child need to be a decent adult, and be independent in the future. And spoiling your child is not good for him/her. I mean, once in a while, you can spoil your child. Kids need that sometimes. Not just kids, we all need some treats after a hard work, right? Ok, so my point is, you shouldn't spoil your child too much because you don't want your child to be a spoiled child and a spoiled adult in the future. 

Scolding your child is necessary when your raising a child. But how you scold your child is very important. Long story short, this is where my mom failed. I was yelled at a lot by my mom. And there were many times when she beat me when I did something wrong (or when what I did didn't turned out as what she expected?). I was slapped, I was beaten, I was kicked, and the list goes long if I were to mention with what she beat me. I simply cannot write down all the reasons why she had to beat me because there are just so many. So... let me give you just one example. I remember it so clearly. My mom was really enthusiastic about education. How well her kids did in school really matter to her. Some parents do not even know what their kids' homework look like. But my mom wasn't satisfied by merely completing schoolwork and doing homework. So at home, I had to complete another curriculum at home. One of the things I had to do was the weekly kanji test. My mom would read out a sentence at a time, and what I had to do was to write the kanji in question. For me, confessing that I cannot write the correct kanji because I could not remember it was so scary. Why? Because she would get angry. And when she was in a bad temper, things got catastrophic. The memory starts with a scene where I am standing in a room in an apartment where I used to live when I was in elementary school, with my nose bleeding because my mom beat me. And I am crying so hard because it hurt a lot, not just physically, but also mentally. She got outrageous, and beat me that hard because I was doing good enough in the kanji test that day. Some blood dripped down from my nose to the tatami floor. My mom yelled again because I wasn't supposed to make a mess in the house. I was crying, and my nose was bleeding, and I covered my nose, hoping that it prevented the blood from dripping down to the floor, which didn't really help. I was nothing but the definition of miserable. I didn't know what to do or what I was supposed to do. And once again, my mom shouted, saying, "Go wash your face!" So I went to wash my face in the bathroom, put some tissues in my nose to stop the nosebleed, and went back to the room where my mom awaited. My notebook had got crumpled up because of my tears, and moreover, because my mom had beaten me with it. 

This is what I remember. And there are lots of episodes like this. Oh my gosh, I was beaten with so many things. We humans use tools, right? lol Anyways, seriously speaking, I never want any kids to go through such experiences like I had to go through. I am against physical punishment. No exception. It took a while until I realized and fully acknowledge that my mom was abusive. I had always avoid that the word "abusive," and chosen to say that my mom was strict. But being strict and being abusive are very different. Being strict doesn't mean you can beat your child in the name of education. My mom would always say, "If you can't understand it by hearing it, you have to be beaten;" "If you can't understand it by words, you're less than human; you're the same as farm animals;" "If I have to beat you to make you understand, then you're the same as a cattle or a pig!" And by saying so, she justified her violence towards me, until I started to think that I deserved to be beaten because I was a bad child.

Some of you may think and say, "Well, if your mom is abusive, why don't you tell somebody, and ask for help, then?" Like I said, I thought my mom had reasons to beat me, even though I did know at the same time that she was doing too much. To me, talking about it is almost the same thing as notifying people that I was a bad kid. And I didn't want to do that, of course, because obviously, that's embarrassing. Plus, I knew talking about the issue to other people wouldn't help. I knew my mom wouldn't change for other people's opinions. She has always believed that physical punishment is necessary. It's not like she loves and enjoys beating children, but she had to sometimes. She thinks physical punishment is unavoidable sometimes. And honestly, she has a tendency to get too emotional and overreact sometimes. I guess she was just not good at controlling her emotions, which still doesn't count as an excuse to beat her kids, though.

She has never apologized for hitting her kids. Not a single time. I have apologized to her so many times when she was hitting me. I just kept saying, and screaming, "I'm sorry." But that didn't stop her from beating me. She stopped beating me when she was done. It was like you can't control the weather. I had to wait until the storm goes away. And I know she never will apologize. She doesn't see any reason to apologize for.

Unfortunately, my mom is not the only one. There are still a constant number of people (mostly older generations) who thinks that physical punishment is sometimes necessary. In the old days in Japan, physical punishment were much more common. Even if you were slapped by your teacher at school during class, that was not really a surprise back then. The coach in a sports team would hit the members of the team in the name of coaching, and making the team stronger. Nowadays, younger generations do not like those "You can achieve anything if you have a tough spirit!" kind of beliefs, but the atmosphere of this belief was used to be stronger. Japanese education has changed, and nowadays, teachers do not hit their students. More and more people believe physical punishment is wrong and unethical. But what is sad is that there are still some teachers, sports team coaches, or educator in a broader sense, who are accused of using violence towards their students. From time to time, you see news about those sad events through media. But I think violence at home is less transparent from the outside than violence at school or workplace. And I believe that there are still many children who suffers from violence from their parents.

Violence at any place is bad, and need to be excluded. Violence does not teach any good lessons. Violence really gets in the way of building a trust-based relationship. My mom has been my mom for more than 24 years, but I still cannot trust her, and be open to her. I tend to hide my feelings in front of her. When a person was confronted with violence, fear dominates him/her, and he/she can no longer think. The person will learn he/she is not supposed to do certain things, not because it is a wrong thing to do, but because he/she will get punished. This is really important, and you'll see why by looking at this example: you shouldn't kill anybody because killing is bad, not because you'll be thrown into a jail if you kill somebody. Well, it doesn't have to be killing; it can be stealing, cheating, or any bad things. Thus, when fear dominates you, you stop learning things properly. Moreover, fear brings helplessness, and it suppress spontaneity. Spontaneity is what so special especially about children. Not only children, but also adults learn best when they are allowed to think freely. Interesting ideas come from spontaneity. When there is fear, we start to watcher over our actions and speeches. We start to behave based on fear. We refrain from speaking up, and try not to cause any "trouble" so that we don't have to be punished. This is what will happen to children surrounded by violence. They'll think they're bad children even if it's not true, and limit their actions in fear of punishment for a very long time.

As I said, it took a while until I acknowledge that my mom was abusive. I didn't talk about this issue to my friends or other adults, except for my boyfriend. He is the only person whom I have allowed to touch the deepest place in my heart. I told him my secret, and how I have been raised up in my family. His eyes were filled with tears, and he said, "I am very sorry for all those things you had to come through." And he also added that what my mom had done is wrong, and that I should never think myself as a bad kid. My mom wasn't being strict; she was being abusive.

I don't want anyone to experience that same thing as I did. I do not believe in physical punishment. And now that I have recognized that my mom was abusive, and that I was never a bad kid who deserved to be beaten, I have been able to be more vocal about my childhood. Never justify violence. Physical wounds may disappear, but mental wounds will never disappear; they'll stay as nasty scars forever. Let's put an end to physical punishment.