There are times when we as individuals, we experience conflict because of our different characters. But in the moment when there’s a very tough decision to make, do you keep quiet or retaliate?
Let’s take time to define these two terms. Silence is to become silent; prohibit or prevent oneself from speaking. Violence on the other hand, is behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something.
When there is a conflict or an argument we should think of our actions and the consequence before carrying them out. It might look like walking away will make you look weak or stupid but trust me you have saved yourself a whole lot of trouble. There’s a quote I saw sometime last year, it says “sometimes silence is golden and other times its plain yellow”. In other words, sometimes you have to stand up for yourself. Don’t get me wrong in standing up for yourself you do not have to hit someone or break the person’s heart with hurtful words because, there is such a thing as assertion which is standing strongly by your belief.
There’s a popular saying “violence is never the answer” and this is not far from the truth. This act has caused a lot of damage in our society today at home and abroad. A lot of people have lost their lives, families have been torn apart and wars have erupted. A very sad story is one that occurred in my secondary school few years back, two boys were arguing about a bucket who owned it and who didn’t. now instead of settling it amicably or one person should have just walked away, they started fighting and in the course of that one of them hit the iron bucket on the other boy’s head and he lost his memory and a part of his brain was damaged. This is just one of the many bad things that violence has caused and we have to stop amongst ourselves before talking about stopping world violence.
Globally, violence resulted in the deaths of an estimated 1.28 million people in 2013 up from 1.13 million in 1990.Of the deaths in 2013, roughly 842,000 were attributed to self-harm (suicide), 405,000 to interpersonal violence, and 31,000 to collective violence (war) and legal intervention. In Africa, out of every 100,000 people, each year an estimated 60.9 die a violent death. Corlin, past president of the American Medical Association said: “The United States leads the world—in the rate at which its children die from firearms.” He concluded: “Gun violence is a threat to the public health of our country.” For each single death due to violence, there are dozens of hospitalizations, hundreds of emergency department visits, and thousands of doctors’ appointments. Furthermore, violence often has lifelong consequences for physical and mental health and social functioning and can slow economic and social development.
In 2013, assault by firearm was the leading cause of death due to interpersonal violence, with 180,000 such deaths estimated to have occurred. The same year, assault by sharp object resulted in roughly 114,000 deaths, with a remaining 110,000 deaths from personal violence being attributed to other causes.
The bible says Proverbs 10:19 “When there are many words, transgression is unavoidable, But he who restrains his lips is wise”. If we can learn as individuals not to react to everything, be silent and just walk away, the world will be a much better place and the issue of violence will be minimized.
“Silence is argument carried out by other means.” -Che Guevara
-Chuks-Emmanuel Penuel
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