Have been really working the coping skills today. Trying to cope with the over stimulated emotions has me hypo manic and who knows what next.

It all centres around this dilemma I am facing about bullying and how we respond to bullying or even if people recognize it when it is in their face. Or how people deny or ignore it when it serves their best interest. Here is some of what I am asking while I try to sort things out.

When is it okay for a bully to decide who I hang out with? When is it okay for me to turn a blind eye when I know he is bullying someone else? I am in the business of helping people. The person he is bullying could really benefit from my support. To challenge the bully could be very risky. It could compromise my ability to support others. Is one person’s interest enough to jeopardize the opportunity to help many others who need my help too? It is a risk I take.

The bully gives me lots of help to do my job; just so long as I don’t try to help those people he is bullying. Do I turn away from one person in need? Do I turn a blind eye and keep taking his generous gifts to me or do I take a stand and find a way to survive without his support? I feel compelled to take a stand.

Can I live with the trade-off? Can I turn my back on someone in need? Can I compromise my own values and ethics? How do I stay true to who I strive to be as a human being if I can be bribed? How do I maintain my promise to live an ethically principled life and turn someone away who I am morally charged to support? I can’t.

I want to not be willing under any circumstance to compromise my promise and to not be a hypocrite. I want never to be bullied into trading my moral obligation, no matter the cost. I want to be true to a principle-centre life. It really is all or nothing with me. You can’t believe yourself as principled or believe you are walking a good road if you can be bought and detoured.

Why do I feel so alone with such strong and life determining beliefs? It makes me crazy to see how little ethics survive real life situations these days. I am all mixed up.