It’s Always Hard to Control Your Demons…

I read recently an article in one of the papers that said it is perfectly normal to want to kill your boss if after a bad day at work you’ve daydreamed idly about pushing him down the stairs, even in some cases going so far as killing him.

My own reflection is as follows; when I came to England from what used to be Palestine aged 18 to study engineering, I spent a year at Battersea polytechnic when suddenly the Israeli government stopped my father sending me the required funds to carry on with my studies.

Seeking permission from the Home Office at the time to seek employment I was flatly refused, when some MPs took my case and succeeded in persuading the home office to let me stay in the UK on condition that an employer will offer me the kind of job where vacancies exist but are hard to fill.

An Englishman who knew my father in Palestine during the British mandate offered me a manual job in a company in Staffordshire to where he held a very senior position.

After much ado at the Home Office I was given permission solely to work there as long as the job was purely manual.

On the first day of my employment I was invariably catcalled repeatedly by my fellow workers whenever they saw me. “Hey, dirty Arab, where is your camel?”

Although I felt extremely angry and, more often than not, I could have easily retaliated by an act of violence to teach the culprit a lesson, whoever he may be, but I kept my cool for as long as I could bare it.

However, the time came when I could no longer take the insults and hit the leader of the mob with a large steel spanner on his hand which required him to have urgent medical attention.

To my utter surprise and from that day onwards I became a welcome addition to what has become an entente cordial and ended in friendship that lasted throughout my stay in the factory.

The lesson I learnt that there comes a time where such action as I took, despite the risks, becomes the salvation required in the circumstances.

However, normality, as the article suggests is perhaps farfetched and needs to be controlled before it veers to reality.

Such dreams can grow eventually where a psychological disaster hovers in its vicinity.

I honestly believe that the mere thought of killing someone is something we should not toy with whatever the circumstances.