Being born in Brazil, a country with so much violence, I can relate to your experience in that night.
I must admit that Australia is still a great place to live as violence is not as out of control as many other countries....
I do have an advise for anyone that do experience an act of violence, where you decide that you can make a difference.
When confronting your opponent try always to interact and encorage others (witnesses/public) to see what you are seeing...
eg. you will look direct to others and say: please call the police to one or two and say to others : we need to stop this violence this is so wrong...... It will "wake" people up from that movie scene that many are paralised and watching and 100% of the time you will get at least 1 that will help you even if they will only call the police and run....
Your approach to the event was good Macca..... I would've done the same and probably be speaking to the guys at the same time when holding him and trying to bring his mind to earth.....
State of mind is a amazing thing..... when people are in that violent mode they see nothing...they are almost in trance....they will not see anyone else around them or hear anything until something or someone "click" and "wake" them up...... it's a dangerous time and must be done carefully....
The only problem when getting involved on situations like this or even worse like trying to separate a big fight(very very dangerous) is that you might attract that negative energies to yourself....and get involved in the same violence as you were trying to stop....and that's what we don't want to happen. It's a risk we all take when acting but,it can be managed by approaching it in a very careful way....
It's almost as if you "study" the event for a few seconds before hand and react....it's a instinct mixed with fear and mixed with "a must do something about it." It's the "trespassing our confort zones" that makes it more difficult to achieve but, we all been kids before and most of us have experiences with our own kids or nephews, little cousins etc etc....
When you see a kid fighting or being assaulted by another kid you do react in a way that you are more confortable in act upon that violence.....it's still an act of violence but, it's easier to deal with... It is when we have the same situation with adults/ growing ups that we can't trespass that barrier more easily.... maybe for fears of more violence, for law enforcement fears against you or for simply selfishess of our society....
We do need to help each other.... it's completely crazy how people will ignore someone needing a hand, help, in danger.... You will see someone colapse on the streets, and if the person on the floor is well dressed and looking clean in a suit for example, more people will stop and try to help but, if the person is dressed in shorts and shirt with sandals, maybe 1 or 2 people will try to do something about it.... its a very psicological thing the act of HELP others....
WE MUST LEARN TO HELP MORE EACH OTHER ! WE MUST LEARN HOW TO LOVE MORE OTHERS ! WE MUST LEARN TO DEAL WITH ENERGIES...being good or bad....
Macca, you are most welcome to e-mail me if you want to have a chat mate.....it's all good....
You did the right thing and you did it proudly IMHO....and you must recognise it and feel it mate !
Now you must talk this over a beer with your mates, family and working colleagues....its good to talk it over and see different point of views, experiences and advices.....
I for one had a intense past when I was young..... it's a must that we do understand that we can make a difference when events out our confort zones presents in front of us...
