People are offended by things on a daily basis.  Perhaps you heard a professor say something sexist in a classroom, something like “‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ effectively portrays women as depressed, neurotic creatures that must all be taken cared of by their male counterparts, otherwise they will succumb to inevitable insanity.”  Perhaps that I’m a Mormon ad you see every morning on your way to work is suggesting that most Mormons are normal people with ordinary lives.  Perhaps your friend posted a Facebook status about how all Black people are loud and ghetto and that status got over thirty likes - I mean, it’s true, they are all loud and obnoxious and ghetto and always making you wait in long lines whenever KFC has a special on chicken wings.  Holla!  Perhaps Peter Griffin did a spoof on homosexuals, justifying the sole need to gather up all the queers and beat them until they come to their senses and start acting more manly.  Perhaps you wear a hearing aid and cannot understand why the hell people are screaming at you like you’re some retarded, mutant offspring.

The point is this,

No matter who you are, something is going to offend you.  There will come a time in your life when someone will treat you in a manner that is disgustingly degrading.  There will come a time you will witness something that pushes you over the edge.  There will come a time when somebody, and that somebody may well be your friend or family member, says something so utterly unethical, immoral, and unjust, that you will bare your teeth at them in preparation for ripping their logic apart.  You will get angry.  You might repress the things you want to say while flipping someone off mentally and regretting your lack of courage to say how you feel.  You might cry.  You might delete a person off your Facebook.  You might argue with them.  And you know what I have to say about that?  That is a good thing.

Being offended forces you to be passionate.  It forces you to move from that stagnant state you have grown accustomed to - sitting behind a computer screen mindlessly reposting blogs and eating Cheetos and getting fat (and then wondering how the hell you got so fat).  When somebody says something that offends you, it forces you to evaluate your priorities.  It forces you to shape your thoughts, to voice your beliefs, to stand up and go, “Now wait just a damn minute!”  When you notice that something is wrong, it makes you want to fight until it is right - whatever your version of “right” may be.  You feel that little spark inside of you that demands to be heard - and that spark is necessary to live.  It reminds us that we are human, that we are emotional creatures, that we feel.  It means that you actually care about how you as an individual are represented.  That is a crucial element of our lives.  It gives us the opportunity to learn, to debate, to teach one another, and, ultimately, to grow.  This is exactly why I say things that are offensive, or start Internet wars by saying something morally degrading and discriminatory.  I’m not doing it because I truly believe in some of the hateful things I say; I do it because I want people to stop sitting there talking about things nobody cares about.  I want them to get angry.  I want them to move.  I want them to create a mental image of smacking me across the face, because that passion is what I feed on.  That passion is what allows change to occur in the world.

So the next time somebody says or does something offensive, look at it as an opportunity, because remember, there are two sides to every coin.

That is all.

Written by Arthur C. McWilliams IV