Will You Be A Victim?
“He’s a good jail husband,” she said, my favorite bartender.
I heard recently that pretty much everyone has some deep tragedy just below the surface, and I was shocked to discover it’s true. Thinking through my old friends and acquaintances, most of them have gone through some dreadful sadness, that even I was aware of even if I didn’t know them that well.
Parents’ divorce, sexual abuse, a mom who keeps dating new men, no direction in life and depression, a husband who doesn’t care, a step-son who takes advantage, losing a father at a young age. There’s loneliness, depression, cancer, isolation, voices in your head, rape, alcoholic father or mother, domestic violence. I know someone who has suffered each of these.
“He’s a good jail husband,” she said. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“We had a great time when I visited. He was nice. It’s funny, maybe the best times we’ll have is when he’s in jail.” She said it was funny, but there were tears behind the smile.
She eventually left that man for the Oregon coast. I admired her ability to move 8 hours away alone without much of a plan and to still be excited about it. But I admired her a lot more for her ability to move on emotionally from an abusive partner that she loved. That took required a lot more pain and took a lot more courage. “It’s not a fresh start,” she said but she was excited to move on.
Two sons of an alcoholic father
One struggles through life as a drunk
The other becomes a successful, sober businessman.
“Why are you the way that you are?”
Both respond: “My father was an alcoholic”
- Epictetus
Here’s the thing — we are not merely the sum of our suffering. We are far more.
Our movies and novels are full of people who overcome injustice and tragedy— like Shawshank Redemption or Life of Pi. There is something divine in us that transcends our suffering.
Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow Me,” which means to bear our burdens to the death and, after you awaken, do as He does. The Apostle Paul preached that we are not victims. In fact, we are “more than victors through him who loved us.”
We are not mere products, we are processes. We are not just the results of our environment, we are also the force that shapes it. We are stories, not endings.
We are not the simple summation of our tragedies, we are a “part of all that we have met” where the sum is greater than the parts.
You may not be responsible for everything that happens in your life but you are responsible for how you react to it. If you are not able to respond, then there’s no point in reading further. You are a raft at the mercy of the ocean currents. Life is only for those who know they have a rudder in the water.
Responsibility is the ultimate form of empowerment. You can’t change yourself by changing the world, you change the world by changing yourself.
It’s a hard thing to believe so, how can we prove this to ourselves?
We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it…Of course, it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.
-C.S. Lewis
(Brief Interlude)
It’s become popular to use privilege to either excuse our own failures or to explain someone else’s success. Privilege is very real, but it does not control your life.
The worst thing you can do to someone is to convince them that they are just victims. To tell them it’s the system, it’s the country, it’s not them. Here’s the reality: they don’t control the system or country, they only control themselves.
I know people with all the privilege in the world who still complain that the world is rigged against them. I know people who had no privilege who overcame their situation and achieved success and happiness. Privilege isn’t the final arbiter of your fate; don’t let the toxic idea of victimhood determine your future potential.
Your situation is where you start, not where you need to end up.
Whether you believe you can or you can’t, you are right.
-Henry Ford
So how do we gain the confidence to change? How do we convince ourselves it’s possible?
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, was a star high school athlete when a baseball bat shattered his skull and also his dreams of playing in college. It took years to recover from the accident.
During that time, he kept his room clean. It helped him gain confidence, he said, because it was something he could control. Instead of feeling like his life was out of his hands, he took hold of something he could control hoping to one day play again.
There’s a reason West Point makes its students keep their beds pristine. It’s the same principle.
Gaining confidence to overcome you situation starts by controlling, in some small way, your surroundings or even just yourself.
There are so many things you could try: wash one dish a day, do five pushups a day, read one paragraph a night, write one sentence in your journal, drink one glass of water right before you go to work or in the morning, do one google search in a topic you are interested in a day.
These are “micro-habits,” habits so small you can absolutely do them. James Clear also writes that no new habit should take more than two minutes to accomplish, or you get discouraged.
The point is, those little baby steps teach you to walk. Once you get started, it becomes hard to stop. Reading one paragraph a day won’t make you well-read, but building a habit to read each night will.
Eventually, James did play college baseball competitively. And though he didn’t play in the minors like he wanted, he has done consulting and coaching for Fortune 500 companies and wrote my favorite book on habits. I don’t have an affiliate link for it, but I should get one because I tell everyone to read it.
There’s lots of self-help content out there — I leave you to their superior advice.
My only point here is to ask if you are a victim or a victor? It’s a choice only you can make.
