Michael was singled out because things were happening to him that we didn't understand. People thought he was bleaching his skin, they assumed he was changing appearance to not look like his father, and being a major superstar it drew him a lot of attention and people latched onto it like a drug and scrutinized him on everything he did, including making up rumours that weren't true. I think there was also a lot of racism and jealousy involved too since he was an extremely rich and successful black man.
I think of myself in this context and it helps me understand why some people get singled out and bullied. I was very creative and displayed unusual behaviour and despite being from a working class family we had a big house, a big car, and our home was finely decorated. Children who weren't as well off as we were were jealous of me and latched onto my unusual behaviour. As years went on and I was more and more isolated in school with a very tiny circle of friends I fully trusted, I was drawing more attention to my unusual behaviour including some that were being made up. There was nothing I could do that was not scrutinized on. If I ate too much I was accused of being a fat pig, if I stopped eating in desperation to lose weight I was accused of attention seeking by going anorexic, if I took part in events I was laughed and jeered at. Eventually it got too much that I started cutting my wrists and I got mocked for that too.
What Michael went through was a typical playground bully behaviour. Many of us still haven't learned to grow out of the phase of picking on someone for their differences and allowing a mixture of fear of the unknown and jealousy make us behave maliciously towards those we don't want to learn to understand and accept while making ourselves feel stronger on their unhappiness.
What can we do to stop this from happening to someone else in the future? Well we can try to learn to understand and accept things we don't know about. We can try to get along and become more accepting of the people around us and not let jealousy get the best of us. We can stop buying the tabloids and listening to the gossip that sells by running people down. We can try to learn to stop judging one another and instead learn to love one another. It's a big step for the human race to make such a radical change in the way we treat and think of one another, but it's something that's been asked of us since the day the 10 commandments were written. They were written not to restrict us, but in an attempts that we would become better people at the end of the day and a more loving and caring world that wasn't motivated by greed, jealousy, disrespect, and behaviour that could hurt not only ourselves but those around us. Even though we have been redeemed of our wrongful acts by defying the commandments through the death and resurrection of Jesus it's still an idea to try to at least abide by them as best we can as they are there to help make the world a more better and loving place to live in.
