To harm a person is to receive something from him. […] We have gained in importance. We have expanded. We have filled an emptiness by creating one in somebody else (50).

Perhaps the best example of filling an emptiness by creating one in another is bullying. Working at a middle school, I’m witness to many major and minor instances of bullying on a daily basis, and it seems to be getting only worse. Statisticians tell us that’s definitely the case, but even if they weren’t providing empirical evidence, I get enough anecdotal evidence daily to make a strong case.

As a teacher, I find I have to walk a thin line. On the one hand, we’ve seen the headlines of recent years, this or that tragic suicide traced back to prolonged bullying, actions that have created situations in which some people feel suicide is the only alternative. Bullying, then, is literally a deadly serious, and as the authority figure in the room or hallways, I have a responsibility to put an end to it when I encounter it. Yet most bullying today is not like the bullying I occasionally encountered. Today’s bullying, ban and large, is verbal. Indeed, there is a whole category of bullying that could be only mental: cyber bullying. In other words, a lot of bullying is of the type “Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Yet the truth is, words do hurt. Still, we need resilient, self-assured kids who can take care of themselves and who know how to avoid internalizing the stupid little comments they hear and will hear, in one form or another, throughout life, so I don’t want to help kids become dependent on me — or anyone else — to swoop in and save the day every single time says something mean and bullying.

And so when I do encounter something that I judge to be relatively minor but still behavior that could be considered “bullying,” I try to strike a balance. I deal with the individual who said the hateful words, but I spend more time talking to the person to whom he or she directed the words. (That was a long way to get around saying “victim.” It was a conscious choice.) I tell her that there are individuals who only feel good about themselves when making others feel bad. To quote Weil, these individuals have “gained in importance,” but only in their own mind.