Working on Me
I’m sure most if not all of us have seen or heard about the Will Smith & Chris Rock Oscars altercation.
As funny as all the memes have been throughout the day, and you guys know I one that is definitely here for all the humour, there are some serious little pearls of wisdom that can be taken away from the whole situation.
For those of you who have been living in the deepest part of oblivion for the past 24hrs, here is a quick recap.
Chris Rock who was presenting the Oscars made a joke about Jada staring in G.I.Jane2 due to her now shaved head. Jada suffers from alopecia, a fact that some did not know at the time, it’s unknown if Chris Rock knew at the time of making the joke. Jada Pinkett-Smith did not appreciate the joke and her facial expression made it very clear. Will Smith laughed at first, he clearly then caught his wife’s reaction, and before anyone knew what was happening, Will Smith had stormed onto the stage and slapped Chris Rock. He then walked back to his seat, Chris who was stunned was like; “Dude.” Will then shouted at Chris to “Keep my wife’s name out of your f**king mouth.”
There are a few serious points I have taken from the whole situation.
Firstly, people can often take whatever you want to do or say about them often without reacting, but when it comes to our loved ones, most of us do not play at all. People need to learn to keep people’s loved ones names out of their mouths when they are running jokes. Most of us do not play when it comes to our partners and children, so people need to be careful what they say about people’s loved ones.
Secondly, everyone has a breaking point. You never know what people are going through and what might trigger them to finally snap and react to what is being said or done to them. Thirdly, we never know what issues someone is sensitive about. They may laugh off the little snide remarks and jokes like it doesn’t matter, but deep inside they might be hurting by that comment being made so casually. As we often say, be kind. You never know what someone is going through and what we may think is a causal joke and it’s not that serious, to that person, you don’t know what emotions, triggers and traumas that comment brings.
The final lesson I took from this whole situation, is that when you’re about to step into and receive some of your biggest blessings, that’s when the devil seems to come for you the hardest.
Probably one of the saddest things to come out of this, is that out of 94 Oscars, Will Smith is only the 5th black man to win the best actor award. Despite his long and talented career and receiving such an amazing and long overdue achievement, nobody will remember the great honour he received, all everyone is going to remember and has been talking about all day is Will’s reaction to Chris’ joke. This is how life is, you can do 99 amazing things, but the 1 bad thing you do it what people will remember and comment on and want to punish you endlessly for.
Personally, I think Chris Rock bore the brunt of other pent up aggressions and angers that Will Smith has not dealt with internally. Will misdirected his anger and frustrations about other things he has not dealt with at Chris Rock. Will has not properly and effectively dealt with his anger and frustration and he needs to heal.
This needs to be a lesson to us not to filter our feelings. When something hurts you, as hard as it, you need to feel it, feel the pain, deal with it and then heal from it. By burying and masking the pain, you just become a pressure pot ready to explode at any point and it will not come out in a good way. We have to learn to deal with and heal with our traumas so that we can know what triggers us, and then we can learn how to react in a positive way to situations when we get triggered.
We’ve all got our things to work on and so that we don’t end up suffering consequences a lot worse than just people talking about us, we need to work on our individual selves.
Xx
