Why People Bully
Around bullying we’re meeting a big idea about why people behave badly.
People behave badly — they get angry or they do and say mean things — when they are afraid of something. Usually you can’t see what they are afraid of and they don’t tell you. They feel they can’t explain their fear, and they are worried that if they tried to explain no one would understand. So they cover up their fears. They try to look as if they aren’t afraid at all. Maybe this happens to you sometimes.
There’s an old story about this. Once, a very long time ago in Egypt, there was a boy called Androcles. He lived in a village. Every night, all the people in the village could hear a lion roaring not far away in the desert. The lion sounded angry; sometimes the lion would approach the village walls and in the moonlight they could see it stretching out its sharp claws and baring its huge teeth. It looked mean and horrible.
One day, Androcles was playing near some caves and it started to rain. He went to shelter in a cave. It would have been a good place to stay dry… except there, lying at the back, was the lion. As soon as it saw Androcles, the lion jumped up and started making a terrible noise. Androcles was terrified. But, now he was close, he realised there was something strange about the noise the lion was making. It was almost as if the lion was crying. Then Androcles noticed that there was a big thorn sticking into the lion’s paw. That was what had been making the lion so angry: it was in pain. It had been suffering for a long time, but it could never tell anyone what was wrong and it didn’t know how to get the thorn out on its own. Quietly, Androcles went up to the lion and gently pulled out the thorn. The lion stopped roaring and lay down quietly and became the boy’s friend.
It’s only a story — obviously it would be a bad idea to try to take a thorn out of a lion’s paw — but it makes an important point. Lots of people are like this lion. They shout or they get angry, they look mean and threatening, but actually they are suffering. They don’t have a thorn sticking into their hand. They have a different kind of pain, in their mind rather than in their body. Maybe they feel like no one loves them. Maybe they feel ashamed because they know they have been horrible.
Maybe they are sad about something; they could be worried that they will be laughed at or that someone is going to get angry with them. If someone is behaving badly, and not being nice, it is helpful to ask: what’s the thorn in their mind? You probably won’t know the answer. But imagining what the answer might be makes a big difference to how you see this person. Here’s how a search for a thorn might go…
