I watched the movie Snowden. It is based on the true story of Edward Joseph Snowden who leaked the hidden truth about the government. There are many people posted their opinions on the Internet. Some support him as his good deed as a whistleblower and others blame his action as a traitor.
I personally support him and I think he did the right thing. I also admire and respect his courage for doing the right thing.
We encounter similar thing in daily life, although a scale is much smaller than his. Majority people don’t say or do anything to leak or correct it because they don’t want to get involved in any possible danger or trouble.
I have experienced a similar situation. Doing the right thing put me into a tough situation.
At the age of 13, I registered to the swimming club at the junior high school. There were 12 female club members at the beginning. The 12 club members were naturally divided into two groups; 5 members and 7 members. I belong to the first group where the members were fast swimmers with strong personalities. In the second group, on the other hand, the 7 members were not fast swimmers with shy and gentle personalities. The first group turned to be a bullying group and the second groups as a being bullied group.
From the beginning, my group members started picking the other group member one by one, by ignoring them or saying mean things to them, until they felt really sad about themselves and resigned the club.
Honestly, I had no idea why my friends were doing such things. Perhaps, they wanted to keep themselves showing strong or superior to others, or something. My friends kept on doing it to force 3 or 4 club members to resign. I didn’t like being around them to do such things with them.
One day, I took my courage and told my friends what I thought. I thought they should stop bullying other club members. Until then, I thought they were my friends, so I believed they would listen to me and stop bullying others. However, I could not stop them. From the next day, I became their bullying target. They started bullying me by all kinds of harassments.
The harassments continued for almost 3 years. It was very tough days for me, but I never resigned the swimming club nor took day off from the school.
Eventually, I noticed I was surrounded by the like-minded students. I found there were many supporters for doing the right thing.
In the movie, one man told the main character “you may not feel it, but you are not alone.” This simple line resonated with me very well.
When we do the right thing, we may not be surrounded by our supporters right away, but there are supporters for sure. We won’t be alone for doing the right thing.
♬ Any feedback? (^^♪
three wisdom 