Was it me?
Mr Brown’s post and Mr Miyagi’s post about AIDS from homosexual people brings up some memory that I have.
Long ago, when I was in Junior College, I was the vice president of an ECA club. My president and me used the “good cop, bad cop” routine a lot. He was the bad guy and I was the good guy. Bad guy in the sense he would be reprimand people who doesn’t perform or did something wrong and my good guy routine would be to talk to the person afterward and explain why he was scolded and how to correct it.
It worked well, we get things done and everyone is more or less content with the running of the club. This routine can work in a corporate life. Sometimes, one person has to play both role, but not all the time.
Anyway, this good cop bad cop thing made the juniors get closer to me since I was the good cop. They see me as someone they can talk to in the senior group and not someone who has more seniority in them.
One day, one of the guys came over to me asking whether he could talk to me about something. I said okay. Turns out that he has some issues with some of his friends and asking me for some opinions. From what I see, its more or less related to his self esteem. I think he has some bit of low self esteem.
The conversation somehow lead to him telling about this girl he likes and how he has no idea how to go after him. Well, at that time, all I could say was to just tell her how he felt and see how thing goes. After that conversation, we didn’t talk about it anymore and he seems alright. I did pulled him aside a while later to ask him about the friends situation but not about the girl.
A few years later, when there was a club gathering, I was sitting with the same junior group of people catching up on our life. I was quite shock to find out that the guy whom I had talked to turn out to have a boyfriend. Well, I have no problem with that, just that sometimes, I wonder whether I was the seed that leds him to select his alternative lifestyle.
If I had done more, would he had got the girl or any other girl? Was I the one who gave him the hint of what he had been?
Some people says that sexual preference was born in you. Some other would say its caused by circumstances. I wonder which.
You cannot be responsible for the lives of others. People are responsible for their own lives. Personally I try my best not to be either guilt-tripped or flattered by the paths of others’ lives - even where I am a more than passing influence.
Well, the best is of course like you said, not be bothered about how you might or might not be a passing influence, but the nagging doubt is always there. It might not bother me that much, but sometimes, it would just pop up. After all, we are supposed to “shape” their future in some ways.
And, if anything, you should be glad that you probably made enough sense to him to figure out what he really wants.
Sexual preference. In itself, the word preference suggests a choice. Coupled with circumstances (which are influential to choice), I would say the latter. Gender is a biological make-up, but never orientation.
what have you done? do you know that our tongue is a very powerful weapon? it either builts or destroy!
I know what you mean. That is why we need to be careful around kids - especially around the ages of late secondary and JC where they are smart enough to think for themselves but perhaps not worldly enough to be cautious in experimenting. I am a bad influence by many traditional measures of “Asian values” by the conventional Moral Majority. (That is why I can never be a teacher. I would freak out.)
The Jesuits understood this power when they claimed that if you gave them seven years of a child’s life, they would give you the rest (i.e. shape the rest of the person’s life).
hmm, interesting about the Jesuits.. I think Adri said something about if a person wants to switch after experimenting, its probably after those late secondary or JC years.
heh, I also won’t be a teacher.. but its more like retribution on my part.
naaahh… I don’t think a simple conversation can “make someone gay” so to speak. There are way more things about that. If talking about homosexuality would make ppl gay, Caleb would be the Gay-queen since he blogs about it all the time!!! Esp. the fear of all men others might think they are gay…gosh…