When we talk about bullying hate and human encounters, we are really talking about how pain travels through generations.
🇸🇪 Svenska Mobbning, hat och mänskliga möten
– and how pain sometimes shapes stories about “us and them”
This text is about bullying, hate and human encounters – and about how pain can sometimes shape stories about “us and them.”
I thought I was going to write about politics.
But when I started writing, I realised I was actually writing about people.
Bullying and Hate – What Sparked the Thought
A television debate I watched on Skavlan stirred something in me.
There was a representative from the Sweden Democrats – a party I have never really taken much interest in. I do not even remember his name. Yet when I see representatives from that party, something tightens in my stomach.
I think about how Jimmie talks about the “waiting day” and the fear that people might abuse the system by pretending to be sick. And at the same time, I think that we all carry our own stories and fears – and sometimes they say more about us than about others.
But that was not really what I was going to write about.
What stayed with me was the young man who said it could be reasonable for an 18-year-old to leave the country once he turned eighteen. A young person who came here with his family and suddenly stands alone in his asylum process.
How do we think about that?
Is it not strange that a child becomes an adult overnight in the eyes of the system, while still being a child in life?
Yet that was not what troubled me the most.
When Bullying and Hate Become Stories About Us and Them
What stayed with me was when the conversation turned to immigrants and he said:
“I have experienced harassment from immigrants.”
And I think – yes, that is painful. That should not have happened. As a child, you deserved adults who protected you. Adults who stood up for you, who called home, who said: “This is not how we treat each other.”
Most parents, regardless of background, would say the same to their child:
That is not okay.
I was bullied as a child too.
Some of my children have experienced it as well. And it is never okay.
In my case, it was not immigrant children who bullied me.
It was Swedish children. Ordinary children who celebrated Christmas and lived their lives like everyone else. Some did well in school, others did not. And they, too, could be cruel.
It hurts to be mistreated. You become sad. You become afraid.
And yes – you can hate what was done to you.
But not the human being behind the action.
Bullying, hate and human encounters are often connected in ways we do not see until much later.
You can hate the action.
You can hate the words that hurt.
But the person behind the behaviour is something else.
What did we bring home from childhood?
Here I think a lot begins at home.
What were you told when something painful happened at school?
Did someone say it was entirely someone else’s fault – that “those kinds of children are like that”?
Or did someone pause and reflect?
Maybe the child who bullied was also carrying something heavy.
An insecure child without safety at home.
A child without words for their anxiety, who let it out as harsh behaviour instead.
That does not excuse it.
But it may help us understand it.
Sometimes we as adults need to respond with concern rather than hate.
Concern for the child who hurts others.
Concern for what might be behind the behaviour.
What was happening at home?
Where were the adults who should have held that child?
Who saw him when no one else did?
What we carry from home shapes not only how we see others – but how we see ourselves.
Bullying and hate often begin in unhealed childhood pain.
How pain becomes a worldview
We often try to understand our pain by placing it somewhere.
Sometimes we place it in a group.
Sometimes in a narrative about “us and them.”
I think it is possible to explore how a painful experience shapes a worldview – regardless of who caused it.
Pain is pain.
Whether the child who hurt you had your language, your culture, or not.
But when pain turns into hate toward an entire group, something else happens.
It suggests that the wound has not yet been cared for.
And I recognise something else in that dynamic – fear.
Not fear of a person.
But fear of hate itself.
Because hate narrows our vision.
It makes everything simpler than reality is.
It looks for one explanation, one cause, one scapegoat.
And the world is rarely that simple.
When I think about bullying, hate and human encounters, I always return to what children truly need.
What children really need
Children need adults who listen.
Adults who validate feelings.
Adults who correct behaviour without humiliating.
Adults who see actions instead of labelling people.
When I was young, my father often warned me about immigrants.
“Be careful,” he would say.
Yet he gladly went to the local Italian pizzeria, drank beer and ate pizza.
And that was where I later got my first real job.
When I worked there, I became someone.
I had stability, responsibility, belonging.
The pizzeria was run by people from former Yugoslavia.
They gave me a salary, community and trust.
Later in life I worked alongside colleagues from many different backgrounds.
We were a team. We supported each other and the young people we worked with. We were like a family – perhaps a slightly chaotic one – but built on respect and care.
And every time I have truly met someone, something has shifted.
The simple story about “us and them” has cracked a little.
Encounters instead of hate
I am not saying everything is easy.
I am not saying people cannot hurt each other. I know they can.
But I do believe we have a choice in what we do with that pain.
We can let it become hate.
Or we can let it become understanding.
The child who was hurt deserves to be taken seriously.
But that child also deserves to heal – not to carry hatred forward.
Maybe adulthood does not begin when we stop feeling pain.
Maybe it begins when we stop turning our pain into someone else’s blame.
You did not deserve to be hurt as a child.
And the world does not become softer by continuing to strike – not with fists, not with words, not with fear.
Hate builds walls.
Encounters build something else.
You can hate the action.
But the human being still needs to be met.
Questions for reflection
• Have you ever noticed how a painful experience shaped how you see people?
• What did you need to hear as a child when something hurt?
• Are there encounters in your life that changed your view of “us and them”?
• What might happen if we dared to meet the human behind the story?
Reflection
This text carries a quiet sorrow over how pain can turn into hate – but also a warm belief in the power of encounters. Experiences shape us, but they do not have to define us. Adulthood may not be about avoiding wounds, but about how we carry them.
Perhaps it is in the meeting that bullying, hate and human encounters can take a different direction.
AHA – Between the Lines
Between the lines lies a story about responsibility.
Not blame – but responsibility.
Responsibility for how we carry our experiences.
Responsibility not to let pain become walls.
Responsibility to see the human being, even when we have been hurt.
The text does not say that hate is incomprehensible.
It says that hate does not have to be the end point.
And perhaps that is where hope lives –
in the encounter, not in the fear.
“You can hate the action. But the human being still needs to be met.”
📦 Bullying and human encounters
Bullying rarely begins with pure cruelty.
Often it grows from pain, insecurity, shame or the need to belong to a group.
When we only see the behaviour, we risk missing the human story behind it.
But when we dare to see the human encounter, something else becomes possible: understanding, responsibility and change.
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Live today, right now. Yesterday rests in history and tomorrow waits somewhere ahead. Right now is what matters.
Lev idag, just nu. Igår vilar i historien och morgondagen väntar där borta i framtiden. Just nu är det som gäller.
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