I thought it would be fun to write my own definition and then follow it with an "official" one. I first need to thank those patient souls who have accompanied and sometimes guided me along my journey of self-discovery. Through such a current experience I am beginning to "see" something about myself as if for the first time. I am defensive.
As a child I was raised to be passive rather than aggressive. This was reasonably consistent with the worldview of my parents. My minister father was never, as far as I can remember, in a fist fight, nor was my mother. My upbringing focused upon harmony and togetherness (justified by that particular interpretation of the Gospel), so I was not exposed to the lessons of how to be mean spirited.
Those idyllic early years ended when I started school. Totally unprepared, I encountered aggressively dominant personality types who controlled by force. Just as these persons apparently hadn't received the peace and love message I had, I was completely ignorant of how to subject others to my will.
As a result, I was vulnerable to bullying. I am not revealing this discovery about myself to receive pity. Quite to the contrary, I am celebrating a new and better understanding of who I am and why I behave the way I do. The adage that the best defense is a good offense doesn't make sense to one who is not schooled in offensiveness.
Particular bullies introduced me to the concept. They were regularly replaced by others until I emancipated high school. The delight of college was discovering it to be a relatively bully-free environment because, I suppose, many bullies found themselves better suited for more aggressive endeavors.
What strikes me right now as significant about all of this is that bullying isn't restricted to just schoolyards. Depending upon how we define it, bullies permeate the human population and have since the beginning. When I asked my uncle to teach me how to fight (to defend myself against my first grade nemesis) he responded that if you can't lick 'em, join 'em. This is how power and control is exerted by those who have no sense of compassion or kindness over those who don't know how to--or choose not to--fight back.
Current events are making it perfectly clear that our species has not yet learned how to get along. Given that there are soon to be seven billion of us, this is not especially good news. If the only way to deal with bullies is to bully back, then we may as well bend over and kiss our sweet asses goodbye. I'm going to spend some more time thinking about this, and it sure will make me feel a lot better to know that I'm not alone in doing so.
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