The Guilt Free Life

Have you ever been a victim? Who hasn’t at one time or another? If you have never been the gudgeon of any wrongdoing or misappropriation of words then you probably have no need to read my blog. But for the rest of us who aren’t agoraphobic, being a victim is on occasion a heavy weight to carry around on our tender shoulders.

Let’s say someone breaks into your house while you’re at work. They take your laptop, some jewelry, the money from the jar in your closet. They leave a window broken where they got in, but no one is hurt in the incident. You come home, and find your possessions missing, and a hundred different, NEW, thoughts race through your mind: Are they still here? Are they coming back? What’s this world coming to? Why me?

Suddenly you are a victim, the innocent underdog who never hurt a fly, and you are violated and sullied by the acts of another faceless, ruthless human being.

At least that’s how most people would see it.

Now I know you would feel mad, maybe a little afraid because you hear such horror stories on the news about such things (isn’t that why they broadcast it–to scare the shit out of you so you’re glued to the TV waiting for the outcome?); but what if you weren’t mad at all? Are there really people who could come home to that same house, with its broken glass on the floor, their possessions missing, and the same possibility that the culprits could return; and perceive the loss as one they’ve created themselves?

It’s how you view yourself, that’s all. In Neale Donald Walsch’s Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends, he says:

It is as I said before: If you think that you are a victim, say that you are a victim, and act as if you are a victim, you will experience yourself as a victim in spite of the fact that you are not.

(p.56)

Plain and simply, we create our reality. Here’s the difference:

A victim would relish in fear, anger, desperation and anxiety.
A more self-aware person may feel that it was time for his possessions to move on, or that his low-frequency thoughts had matched those of his perpetrators, and may then immediately choose to change his mental attitude in order to bring it back into a positive balance.

So next time you experience a loss or are at the receiving end of a short deal, ask yourself if it really wasn’t time to realign yourself for something better anyway.