Friday, July 11, 2008

Don't Just Sit And Watch

Quit being such a wimp.

No more excuses.

Stand up and tell them what you are thinking and feeling.

And don’t take no for an answer.

You owe it to this person and yourself to push them.



What am I referring to here?

Anyone who has a friend or family member that is causing harm to themselves.

Whether that harm is being caused by alcohol abuse, drug abuse, abusive relationships, or just blatant ignorance of a situation.

Obviously there are some people that are going to respond favorably to you saying something and there are some people who won’t.

Does that mean you should be content to just stand back and watch?

Let’s say you have a friend that drive’s drunk on a regular basis.

And just for arguments sake, let’s say you disapprove of them doing this (which you should by the way).

Do you say something to this friend??

Let’s say you decide that they are an adult and can handle it themselves and you ignore it and right it off as part of who they are.

Now let’s say this person has an accident and is killed in it.

Now, don’t you wish you would’ve said something??

Let’s now say you did say something.

But the friend didn’t want to listen and threatened to not be friends with you if you didn’t chill out about it.

Now what do you do?

Your friendship is on the line here.

I think most people would back off because they don’t want to lose a friend.

I am not sure what I would do personally. It would be really hard, especially if it’s a good friend, to risk that friendship for it.

Especially considering your point may not be heard and it wouldn’t make a difference. And then you would have lost a friend and your efforts wouldn’t have changed anything.

That would suck.

But you know what would make that worse.

Is if you back off and they have an accident and die. Then you would beat yourself up about not doing more.

It isn’t an easy thought to have.

But sometimes you have to put your friend’s well-being before your own.

If you truly are a friend and care about someone than you need to step up and say something.

I don’t care if you have never had a more personal conversation than “hey what are you up to tonight?”

You still owe it to your friend and YOURSELF to stand up and do something.

If you watch from the sidelines as your friend tempts death than you aren’t a good friend.

No matter what excuses you come up with.



Note: there is more to this, but it can’t be told right now.

2 comments:

Sean C said...

Great point man, fortunately, I don't know anyone immediately in need of my intervention. However, this is good food for thought in the case I do know someone. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for coming to visit my blog too, I love new visitors. I responded to your comment in the comments section as well. That video was a real eye opener for me.

GM said...

sean - definitely something for people to keep in mind. you never know when someone may need you to stand up and speak up.