Choose Your Hat

  I can remember a time when, if you walked down the street talking to yourself, you were considered "touched" or "slightly strange". Now though, with mobile phones, people do it all the time and no one gives a shit.

    Isn't this unfair to all the mad people? How are they going to define themselves now? By not washing and dribbling? You mobile users should be more considerate! I don't want to have to put up with a lot of smelly, dribbling mad people just because of you! 

    Just like black skin is a black person's gig, talking loudly in the street to people that no one else can see, is a mad person's gig. You wouldn't put boot polish on your face and walk down the street would you? Black people would think you were taking the piss. You'd be in real trouble and you'd deserve it you uncaring piece of poop! They should make you all work as human statues so you won't be able to even answer the phone let alone talk to people who aren't there. Then, I hope, mean people would come and tweak your nuts and hurl insults at you, and real mad people would come and pee on you, and you'd have to wear silver or bronze boot polish all over because statues aren't ever black. 

    Sorry, but I had to get that off my chest. I always thought you were quite nice and never suspected you would put boot polish on your face just to tease black people. There are racists everywhere I suppose and I just have to live with it.

   If nice people can be racist perhaps the world is more complicated than many of us think? Perhaps we all wear many hats? Beatrice wore a silly hat to the Royal wedding but she's not silly at all. She got much more attention than the boring old wedding and she sold it for $123,390 which she gave to poor kids. Even the Wiggles tried to get it for Dorothy the Dinosaur but they only had $17,000 and that wasn't enough. I'm pretty sure I could make them one for less than that.

     Are you mad at me for calling you a racist? Are your feather's ruffled? Are you screaming, "I'm not racist! He is!" while pointing at some other bloke. I put the bit in about Beatrice's hat to give you a chance to cool down. If you don't have a racist hat that you wear sometimes I'm sorry, but I'm guessing that you have such a hat but your totally ashamed of it and don't want anyone to know about it.

     I have a racist hat but I choose not to wear it

   When I said hats I didn't mean real hats, I meant hats as aspects of ones personality. Hats are an allegory and I think there are as many hats as there are people on the planet. If you own all the hats you can choose which one to wear but most people don't. The hat they wear has been put there by their environment and their upbringing and they don't even know they're wearing it. They just think they're normal and everyone else is weird. They didn't choose the hat; life chose it for them, so how can you be mad at them?

   Be mad at me if you like. I chose to call you racist. I did it to let you feel what it’s like to be blamed when you had no choice. Intolerance of intolerance doesn’t change anything because to change something you have to accept it in yourself first. When you do that you might feel compassion, not outrage. A person accepted warts and all, is more likely to change hats than a person excluded.

    Certain behaviors though are unacceptable but don’t be too quick to draw the line. If nobody’s about to suffer just treat them like they’ve got a nice guy hat on and see what happens.