Some of you do not want me here
But I am here.
I don’t mean here, like here on the social media
But here, i am here. And I am not going anywhere.
Nothing in this world can stop me from being here.
I didn’t make it this far by being afraid or by being silent.
I didn’t make it this far by being weak or stoppable.
I will always be here, and even after am dead, I will still be here and am going nowhere.
I have left my mark on this society and there is nothing anyone can do to undo that.
Judgment is your language.
Judgment, some of you calls it your opinion.
Some of you believe your opinion deserve to be heard every 5 seconds, of everyday, especially on social media.
You comment on everyone’s comment on what you think,
And the fact that you think what you think is always right,
And you are judging everyone all the time, hoping that no one ever judges you.
This is your language; this is the social media age, the total rhetoric that every day tears people down, all in the name of free speech, your opinion.
Because your opinion matters what, all the time? About everything, to everybody?
And you are creating cracks in people.
You are creating this little tiny sliver of pain that never goes away.
The heart will always remember where it has been broken. And every time you give your opinion, every time you give your judgment, you hurt a soul.
But there is something you should know
Your judgment doesn’t hurt me. It makes me stronger.
Every stone being thrown makes me stronger. I pile them up and I climb up higher.
I love your judgment because then I can show the world, you see, the world can throw stones at you, but you don’t have to die. You can pile them up and climb higher and higher.
You can’t kill me with your stones, not with your judgment, not with your opinion and you can no longer create crakes in me, I am fortified.
But there are people out there who aren’t strong as me. I speak for those people
But guess what? Most of you are those people.
Most of you can’t survive stones thrown.
Most of you can’t pile stones thrown, most of you are hurt.
Somebody told you are too black, you are too ugly, you are too fat, too tall, and you are too skinny, not good enough for something. Somebody created cracks in you.
Judgment is your language, but the judgment of a sinner against other sinners is invalid.
Your judgments are invalid. Your opinion on someone else is invalid because you are not any better.
There are no good sins.
Your sins are not better than my sins, my sins are not better than your sins, no body’s sins are better than the others, we are all sinners.
So, your opinions on other people are invalid, but you give them so freely, you create these cracks and now you have all these wounded people.
You are wounded because, hurt people, hurt people.
Hurt people hurt people.
And then, a hurt person goes out to the world, these are the perfect conditions for predators. An abuser can see a crack a mile away, and he can smell blood from water circle. But you broke them down first, remember. You have all these stuffs to say, but you make this person feel as if they weren’t good enough for you.
Because who are you?
Who are you to satisfy?
Who have you ever satisfied to expect others to satisfy you?
That someone isn’t good enough for you, what they do isn’t good enough for you, what they say isn’t good enough for you.
Because you are better than somebody?
Which one of you is God?
Please stand up.
Nobody is standing, wasn’t stand, and so I am supposing everybody is mortal, okay. That’s good to know. Now, you have sent this hurt person out because hurt people hurt people, and so you hurt someone with your judgment and you send them out the world not feeling good enough.
An abuser comes along and say, this person doesn’t love themselves very much because probably somebody tell them every day, why are you wearing that, why do you look like that? Why did you do your hair like that? You aren’t cute, you can’t sing, you are not that beautiful. Everybody has judgment. Now you meet this abuser, and this abuser has these cracks and this abuser flitters in under the armor and they begin to dismantle this person piece by piece, bit by bit, breaking them down to their smallest molecule and the next thing you know is that we have larger and harsher abuses happening. Verbal, emotional, sexual, financial, digital, and stalking and we are all aware of the physical abuses that show sign. Many have heard their lips busted, nose busted, some bleed all over a new born baby when the man beat his wife, some have been beaten since the day they were born.
That’s why you can’t hurt me.
You can’t hurt me with your opinion, you are not saying anything I haven’t heard already.
But don’t say it to someone else, who isn’t as strong as I am
Because you don’t think about what happens to that person after, after you judge them, after you break them down a little more today.
You don’t know when that person leave this place, who they are going to run into after you just made them feel bad about themselves. It might be a partner, it might be a beater, it might be somebody who wants to hurt somebody else because they are hurt and then that person becomes a victim again, and again, and again, and its perpetual, but it didn’t start with you. See, it started earlier.
It started in those formative years, between birth and age 5. We learn certain things. We learn alphabet, numbers, shapes, colors. We learn to tie our shoe lasses, bath by ourselves.
During this period, 85% of who you are going to be, your personality begins to be formed.
90% of your brain forms between birth and age 5. This is when most people learn abuse.
You think that it’s being punched in the face. You think that it’s being thrown out from up stairs, you think its bloody and the bruises involved, you think abuse works in a certain way.
But between the age of zero and 5, someone taught you something that you will carry with you for the rest of your life. Someone said something about you and it hurt you. It could be another kid. It might be an adult. Maybe you weren’t as pretty as your sister, as smart as your cousin, maybe you just couldn’t run as fast as your brother, but someone planted a seed of doubt into your mind and you didn’t think it was an abuse. Every time someone tells you, you aren’t good enough; they are abusing your mind. They are diminishing a part of you and it happens every day. Abuse is so silent; it happens so easily and often goes undetected. That external rhetoric then becomes the internal rhetoric and you say to yourself, maybe my hair is too nabby.
I got bad hair.
Or I am too black and yes, I wish I were a little lighter like Toke Makinwa, so am going to stay out of the sun. Oh, I am not that smart because I don’t get best grades. My brother does better than I do and I can’t just compete. I am not good enough for this course, it’s only reserved for certain kind of people and you don’t realize you are being abused and then you could see someone else, maybe it is your best friend, and you say you are just too fat, or you are not clever. Now, you are abusing your best friend and you call it your opinion, but its judgment.
And it’s a language.
Abuse is a language. It’s something we are taught in our formative years that we never let go. And now that we are in a social media age where everything is so open, everyone wants to share their taught every 5 minutes of everyday, without realizing we are abusing each other and goes from being familiar to being societal.
Judgment, secret, shame. Someone taught you all of these things. The thing about me is that it is not what I have said that made you so angry, it is the idea that I have a voice at all and I ask people, what would you do if you have this freedom? What would you do if you feel this free? To say what you felt, not just some opinion that is going to tear somebody down, but really say how you feel, how someone, how life, how society made you feel. What if you were this free? What would you say about what someone has said to you , done to you, how they have hurt you, how they have told you, you are not good enough, what would you say if you are up here in my position instead of me?
Don’t be mad at me because I get to say how I feel about what I have seen, what I have been through, what I have done. I am not telling you stories that haven’t been told before, anything new under the sun.
Abdulrazaq O Hamzat transcribed this from Karrin Stefans speech and made few inputs.