Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Which situations need courage to be taken care of?

Courage is the abilty to deal with situations that frighten the others. So courage would discribe the talent to sustain fear better than the others. An other signification is also the skill to be able to trust your convictions and to behave in their way. Courage might be a question of self-confidence then.
According to me, courage is present in everyone but only a few make the effort to pluck up this courage and too often choose the easiest way to handle a situation. Situations that needs strenghtness (phisically or mentally) occur every day, when you need to study for a difficult exam or even when you have to wake up to go to school. However this is not courage, what we are speaking about is linked with serious situations and sometimes extreme danger. 
When I am thinking about courage, the first example that comes up to me is people who are fighting their illness. When people face a despondent diagnosis people have generally two options: or to be resilient and fight back or to fall into a deep depression. It takes courage to keep your mood up even if you know that your state of mind is essential in your treatment. 
As far as I am concerned, I don't know if I would have the guts to face such kind of situations but  sometimes it is a person's duty to have some. If you are witness of an attempt to harsh a people's health it is your duty to react as prompt and hard as you can.
Finally I had like to give an exhaustive list of people that have shown courage in acting for their convictions: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Benazir Bhutto but also artists like Johnny Clegg and many others. Those are the one why the word courage exists. 

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

What are the behaviours that infuriates me.

There are some behaviours that make me angry , but in a regular way. Others turn me in an aggressive comportment , racism is one of those and this is the one I'm going to speak about.
I'm only 18 and I know that the situations I have encounter are not the worse that you could imagine but they are still interesting. Interesting in the sense that they allow us to think about how others are sometimes thinking. Although I entirely respect that people have different opinions, I reckon that those points of vue shouldn't put others' integrity in danger.
According to me racism is not as present than it has already been in history, if there is any kind of reason to this I would point the awakening that occured after WW2. People realised where racism could lead. Nowadays, 60 years after those dark events, the question remains without answer: Did we manage to learn from our mistakes?
A behaviour is not a way of thinking but a way of acting, that means that racism is noticed only when people show that they are racist in their mind. What I try to explain is that everyone has some racism deeply in his mind, the point is: What degree of this state of mind are you following when you act?
Racism has been existing for ages there is no doubt about this but we are now living in a multicultural society. I have been to Africa three times and I met wonderful people there. I admit that it is maybe the reason why my judgement isn't completely objective but when I see coloured people that aren't able to find because racists do not want to hire them or when people don't sit beside a black guy because of his colour I am revolted.
Is racism a question condition, education or even heredity? Are people racist because it gives them a group to be linked to? Is racism a human caracteristic? I don't know but I would like to understand.