i think intolerance is poisonous

“Prejudice is the child of ignorance.”-William Hazlitt

At some point or another every single human being present on this planet is bound to make a prejudice against someone for some flimsy reason. The biggest prejudice I always use to make was against people getting married young. Before I even knew them individually or as a couple, before I knew anything about the dynamics of their relationship or the strength of their commitment, I would assume they were simple minded people who were desperate to look like a meringue and a penguin who didn’t look further than their nostrils. For these intolerances I was blatantly open about, I apologise.

While I used to fiercely be on the side of “you are too young, how can you possibly know he/she is your one” I now have done a complete flip as I now stand on the young lovers side, openly declaring my desire to have a long-term commitment with the man of my dreams. Another issue I always had was an intolerance of the length of the courtship before this very serious decision was being made, for example a friend of mine and her partner only knew each other a year before marrying (and quite young) and I was awful in my perspective, without even taking the time to find out how she felt I made a judgement on their relationship, and yet here I am now being judged by many a person on exactly the same issue as I know today that I would marry my boyfriend tomorrow after a mere four months.

I have learnt many things about myself, about who I used to be and about who I am becoming whilst in my relationship , things I would not have been able to acknowledge or accept about myself had I not found my soul mate so quickly and at such a young age. I know now how much strength a young couple needs to be able to stand as a team against family and friends concerns and I will always be sorry for being a force against young marriage for so long, however it has shown me an important learning curve, one that I feel I am walking towards and our adventure starts now.

My point here is that there are some things one can’t understand until one has walked in their shoes, it is a saying we all know, one I often rolled my eyes at as a youngster, but it couldn’t hold more truth. Taking the time to understand someone’s decision before making a short-sighted judgement on them is one of the key concepts in healing the population’s qualms with each other; it is one of the lessons to learn to help us respect and dignify each other’s choices. Everyone is guilty of being prejudging or intolerant over something at some point, myself included.

I challenge everyone to stop cruel thoughts about other’s in their tracks and slide on a new pair of eyes to have a clearer vision of that person and their needs and wants in life.
I have been very open about how I feel about Dale, to his mother, my mother and friends. A few have supported, a number have rolled their eyes and made some sarcastic comment about when they expect the expiration date to be but no matter what your belief is, no matter who is attacking it, no matter who doesn’t give you the support you desire, no matter how tough it sometimes is not to hit mouth the judgement jumped from, the most vital thing is that you believe in what you are taking the slack for.

Believe in yourself and what you believe in and you my friend, are bulletproof!