Someone quite brilliant (in my own opinion), once said “Offence can never be given, only taken”.

This is something particularly significant that I have come to realize. Before someone can offend me, I have to allow that person to do so. It is easy to understand that most people don’t know that how to react to what they consider “offensive”. What I’ve come to understand is that when offence is taken, it is simply something most of us can’t control. Without control, it causes an instantaneous effect on our emotions which in turn causes us to react in an irrational manner. At that instant offence is taken, our judgement becomes clouded by our emotional response to whatever it is that we feel has offended us.

What most don’t realise is that taking offence is just another emotional reaction we can learn to control. All human beings are born incapacitated and having no control over our feelings. We develop skills as our minds develop over time and we train ourselves to control most of our emotional reactions. As adults we can control how we act around people we dislike. For example, at work when faced with a situation such as this where we ultimately have to interact out of necessity, we as adults choose not to let our feelings get the better of us and so we choose to cooperate with the person(s) we deem unappealing for the sake of the job. For children it is quite a different matter. Children react quite honestly to people they dislike on impulse. It is only when we grow up we learn to control our emotions and that allows us to build trust in others unfamiliar to us. The same can be said about being offended. Once we learn to control our emotions, we can as easily brush away negativity by our better judgement. Simply put, being offended is not a natural reaction, rather a choice that one unconsciously makes.

According to the statement, if offence can only ever be taken, then the "offensiveness" is our reaction to a statement, not a property of the statement itself. Moreover, when someone makes a statement, he or she does not know for sure whether the statement will offend someone else. It is up to the person listening to decide whether or not he or she is offended by it. Every time you take offence, it is simply because you have chosen to feel that way. The nasty feeling you have is a direct consequence of your choice, not of the statement which motivated it.

When I talk about choosing not to take offence, I refer to the kinds of things that shouldn’t deeply offend anyone as in a passive statement made by a third party or someone eating meat in front of a vegan. If you choose to see it as it is then you end up being offended.

With that being said, I should add that not all offensive statements should be taken lightly as it is not always an easy thing to do especially if the statements is aimed to offend someone directly or on a personal level, then one can expect any normal person to take offence. We should instead practice asking ourselves why is it we are taking offence and try to understand the offenders point rather than reacting irrationally and unpredictably.

~ @Lonely_Niugini