Undertones

"Don'e be like a girl. Come on. Jump!".

"You are not a girl. Now put your head into the water".

"See those girls. Even they are not afraid of swimming in the big pool".

A person's true nature is often very evident in times of frustration. In my failing attempts to make my eight year old cousin swim, I resorted to shaming and comparison, What he needed was courage. Therefore who he had to be compared with was a group that was not associated with it. The sentences came to me almost naturally, Without thought.

And then I caught myself swimming in that stereotype. It surprised me for it opposed the strong belief my rational self held on the idea of equality. Following the surprise came the shame, the shame in the knowledge that despite my open claim that women were by no means to be taken to be mentally or emotionally weaker to men, I subconsciously did harbour thoughts that they were in fact, weaker. Plus, it was made worse by the realisation that I was reinforcing the same idea in an eight year old kid.

Then again, it would more shameful to claim to be an all perfect human with purity in thought, word and action. For perhaps, we all have, even if we might never admit to it, traces of sexism, racism and all other bigoted characteristics of man. Does that mean we should be ashamed of ourselves? I suppose not, as long as it is not the domineering thought, such that it translates to words and actions that results in people getting hurt, emotionally or physically. 

After all, would good exist in the absence of evil?