The events in PARIS in recent days has triggered so many feelings about the violence I have lived with, worked amongst (and hated) over many years.
I consider the ISIS boys to a gang of young guns who, if they live to grow to maturity, will regret who they have been - the behaviour they have oppressed people with.
Their elders - they are the primary contributors to hate and death.
I know no better than make contact with offenders, build relationships with them, love them unconditionally ( I can't do that 100% because of my imperfection - but I am committed to love with all I have) and journey on with these beautiful humans (we can see a persons behaviour but we can't see their journey).
I believe that there is not one person in the world who will not eventually respond to LOVE.
I don't believe in bombing humans - we can kill anyone/everyone and not even know who!
We need to get close and love ........... I don't know anything else ...................
This is me back in the day - how do you LOVE?
This is me back in the day - how do you LOVE?
***
The boys were outside...
..... kicking the Youth Club door again.
They were on a suspension from club.
Only a week before they had reached a peak of violence.
They had been smashing numerous car windows and stealing from them.
They then steamed the club swinging iron bars and broken cues.
Then six of them had acquired a scaffold pole and rammed it with force at my office window.
All our windows are made of unbreakable glass (it was either board them up and live in darkness, or grill them up and create an environment of hostility and defence – or this type of glass).
It wasn’t therefore the window that broke but the frame smashed and splintered as the glass bent to allow the metal pole through.
I was upset because ‘Gloria’ my canary Gloria has got to flying for some time.
Yes, she is OK thanks!
Now the boys were back, eight of them.
I went out to face the hostility while the door was locked behind me.
They were only sixteen/seventeen years of age
but I faced a barrage of all sorts of abuse and questioning.
Legs apart, arms by their sides,
fists clenching and unclenching,
jaws tight and teeth prominent,
the leaders of the group were frustrated and angry.
I could have stayed with my black to the closed club door
and facing them stood my ground.
That is what I felt like doing.
It was much harder to wander across the pavement towards them,
thirty feet away.
I felt I had to, though.
Still chatting in a warm but firm way,
I bent down, feet in the gutter and bum on the kerb.
The boys had moved with me, still slagging me off.
Circling me and kicking stones around with aggression.
I picked up the pebbles from the gutter and flicked them across the road with my thumb.
I felt my back vulnerable as they moved around me like restless wolves.
Before long, however, I was joined in the gutter by one, and then two,
until most sat in a line talking while the others crouched in the road,
facing me, only moving for cars going past.
We chatted on – and the words became friendlier
and the conversation more positive –
that leads into another story, but…
The analysis of this was – I had deliberately taken a non-aggressive body posture.
I had made myself vulnerable,
very hard to do under such circumstances
(my trained mind told me to do it, my emotions were telling me to run in
and slam the door or at least keep my back protected).
The boys had ‘paced’ me and had followed me into a non-aggressive posture.
They had a limited repertoire in dealing with conflict
– ‘Fight or flight’ –
i.e. fight your way out of aggro – or,
if well down the pecking order – damn well run!
I have a larger repertoire and was able to think alongside my strange emotions
and decide on how best to steer the situation, morally, verbally, and non-verbally.
Emotional Intelligence in action.
Reading and understanding body language
isn’t just an interesting subject
– in a hostile environment
it can be dangerous not to........
I love them.
An extract from
'Gutter Feelings'
my first book
updated
New re-published and extended
View or buy here Paperback or Download
The Photograph above is not related to my reflections
but they are real humans who I have known and loved.
*
