How To Talk about Insults, Violence, and Walking Away

How often have you been insulted or hurt in the last year, and what was your response? My latest way of dealing with insults is smiling and walking away. I'll admit, the insults are relatively benign. Not at all like the ones I received when I was on television or when I worked in PR for the Work Bullies. 

I've had strangers scream at me, had photographers insult me, and some viewers wrote nasty letters and e-mails about out fat I'd become.

Sometimes I handled the insults well; other times, I got down into the dirt and verbally insulted right back. 

It never entered my mind to slap someone.

I said this repeatedly all my life. I don't believe in violence. I don't believe in spanking children. My mom could destroy me with one "Look." My father was hot-tempered, but he was a lover, not a fighter; we didn't hit in our family.

I thank God I have that. I've tried to pass that on. 

I remember the great line from "Fiddler on the Roof."

A Villager says,  "An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth."

And Tevye responds, "Very good. That way, the whole world will be blind and toothless."

But things are different now. It's not just social media or movies; it's life. Lose an election? Lie and incite an insurrection. Want more power? Invade Ukraine. Kill innocent people. Want to stay in power? Encourage racism, insult immigrants, harm women, destroy Democracy. 

I'm an adult. I can handle all of this. But it's different for our kids. We've gotta stop attacking each other for our kids.

All this brings me to this podcast episode; it's about our kids. We've got to talk to them. And help them and show them what scientist Albert Einstein said in a letter to his daughter, "

There is an extremely powerful force that, so far, science has not found a formal explanation to. It is a force that includes and governs all others and is even behind any phenomenon operating in the universe and has not yet been identified by us. This universal force is LOVE."

A transcript and links to what else Einstein said in his letter to his daughter, Lieserl, are on my website, https://gloriamoraga.com/.