After our dinner and while I was contemplating life and our conversation, something he said to me came back to me loud and clear. And what he said was he never looks at himself as a victim regardless of what has happened to him, happens to him or will happen to him. He looks at everything with a sense of happiness. He does not allow his circumstances to dictate who he is regardless of how hopeless his situation may seem. He remains as positive as he can that things will work out as they are meant to and as such they often do.
He also said he is very grateful for where he is in life considering from whence he has come. His life circumstances as a child not being as picture perfect as depicted in fairy tales. But he coped and learned never to think of himself as a victim. A philosophy I share totally.
And though I admired him for saying this, I did not fully comprehend why we had had dinner together until much later last night. When I was alone in my room upset about the way certain things in my life are unfolding. And asking for guidance as to how to deal with these situatons that keep resurfacing. And it was during my period of contemplation that I received my answer.
What came to me was no matter how people treat us. No matter what we have been through. We have been given these circumstances to allow us to grow into better people. We have been given these circumstances because we asked for them. Came here to learn them and every so often when we lose our way, an angel appears in the least expected way to remind us of why we are here and what we are here to do.
Last night my angel came in the unexpected form of my colleague. Reminding me regardless of what circumstances I find myself in, it is up to me to choose how to feel. How to respond. To decide what makes me happy. And more importantly to accept I cannot change the way another person feels or thinks. All I can do is change the way I respond to them. And only in this way can I take myself out of being the victim, looking for someone to blame for the choices I have made, putting me in the situations I find most uncomfortable.
And when I do my whole outlook changes, the sadness lifts and the victim mentality shifts away. Allowing me to regain the power I need to remember I am the creator of my life, the circumstances I find myself in. To know there is no use in blaming others for how I feel because it is not them that make me feel this way. It is me taking on their energy and trying to shift it to suit me. In doing so I become a victim of their circumstances rather than the creator of my own story.
And for my dinner with my colleague preparing me to change my way of thinking from victim to creator of my story, I am truly grateful. Reminding me always, our past is a part of who we are but it does not have to define us or limit our potential. At some point in our lives, we have been the victim as we have been the perpetrator and the reason this happens is to allow us to see both sides of the equation. To learn compassion. To learn to redefine the lines of our lives so that we can limit the amount of times we fall into the victim-perpetrator dualism, to borrow this phrase I love coined by Louise Hay. Ultimately paving the way for us to stop the cycle of seeing ourselves as victims and thus taking on the form of the aggressor/perpetrator because at some point in our lives we felt we were victims.
But when we continuously paint ourselves as victims by believing we are not worthy of the abundance freely available to us, we will find we fall into the victim-perpetrator dualism more than we need to be. Because we falsely believe we have to get back at those who wronged us by becoming the perpetrators so we lash out at those who chose not to allow circumstances to define them. Instead of learning from them. Instead of seeing these people look at circumstances as opportunities for growth so they embrace them. We fail to see that regardless of the outcome, our role is not to become the victim or the perpetrator.
At some point in our lives we have to stop victimising others because we were victims once in our lives as Edward W. Said once said. There has to be a limit so let's just get on with living from a place of gratitude, faith and hope. Life is full of joy, abundance, love and light when we choose to see it from the viewpoint of the glass is full of all we want and need. Not empty from us being so blinded by lack, we miss seeing all the glass has on offer just for us.
So what will it be victim or creator? Lack or abundance? It's up to us to choose. Life is all about the choices we make. The roles we assume. The lessons we learn. It is all about how we choose to redefine the lines of our lives. Not the lines of the lives of others. And for this lesson I am truly grateful. Namaste.
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