Jawaban

Good morning to all ladies and gentlemen who present here. It is such an honor for me to be given an opportunity to be standing here giving a speech on tolerance in life. First of all, let’s all express our gratitude toward The Almighty who has given us His endless blessing and grace so that in this sunny morning we all can be here in good condition and health.

Ladies and gentlemen, what is tolerance? Tolerance is a willingness to accept beliefs and behavior that are different from our own with which we might not agree or of which we might not approve. Is it important? Yes, it is. We need tolerance in our life in order to live peacefully. It has always been known that this earth is inhabited by people with various races, ethnics, and religions. And it has always been a fact that we live in the society whose members have different backgrounds from each other. These differences often lead to friction among the people in the community. In order to maintain the harmony and unity in the community, mutual respect from the members of the community is needed. To establish this mutual respect, they have to be tolerant toward each other. We have to be too, because we are also the members of the community.

Ladies and gentlemen, imagine if we live without tolerance. There would be wars and conflicts everywhere. It would be impossible for us to live together in harmony with those who are different from us. We would live in terror that people outside our groups would attack us anytime. Unfortunately, there are still people out there who feel this terror. The fear of being excluded, mocked, and ridiculed for being who they are and based on what they believe. Just because they are not the same like the rest of the society, they are being discriminated. These people are the minority. They are humans too like us. They have the same rights and obligations like us. Yet they cannot live peacefully like us. Why? It is because there are still intolerant people live among us who will always play the majority card to justify their evil doings. It is sad, but all we can do is to show love and respect to the minority by giving them tolerance.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is true that tolerance is important, but we must be wise on being tolerant. It means that we must set our own principle as to what extent we tolerate something since it is also wrong to tolerate behavior and beliefs that can be harming and can only create negative effects to us and the society. We must know when we should give tolerance and when we should not. We cannot tolerant everything. Tolerance, just like other good things, should not be overly used.

Ladies and gentlemen, to end my speech, let me quote what was Karl Popper once said, “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.” Tolerance is something we need in life, but we must use it wisely. Otherwise, it could ruin the essence of tolerance itself and could bring bad outcome to us and others. Thank you very much.