Stop Being a Victim

Today, I was reading an interesting timeline of a friend of mine on Facebook. She likes to read non-fiction and hardly reads fiction these days. Her timeline is full of articles about science, feminism and art. Everything she posts is worth reading and I find the stream of articles she shares thought invoking and challenging.

The article she posted today was not too challenging. I didn't agree with its premis that men are more successful because they are more competitive and that is because they either innately or through life learn to play well in groups. It is an interesting idea but as usual myself and a lot of my female friends are living contradictions. Ask anyone who has worked with me or played boardgames with me or even had a glass of champagne with me on Melbourne Cup Day and you'll hear how insanely competitive I can be. This has been tempered with age but that drive is still alive and well and a healthy part of who I am.

That isn't the point of why I am writing this though.

Along with this post on her timeline came comments from one of our mutual friends. This friend interprets everything she reads as evidence to reinforce her view of the world. In this case, men and women work against people like her who have a competitive spirit and combine to thwart her upward and forward movement in her life.

If this was a one off occasion then it wouldn't bother me too much. This however is not a one time thing. She is the flagship amongst some negative people I know who suffer from a victim mentality.

It is painful to watch and impossible to talk to her about because all she'd see is more people raining on her parade. To be honest, if she read this, she wouldn't even know I meant her. *sigh*

There is a simple formula I have for life...

People who look outward for the cause of all their problems will never fix the real cause which is most often their approach to life. Instead they will blame others.

People who look inward for cause and try to improve who they are or what their choices are (including who they allow in their lives) will become better people. They will do so because they realise that you can't change how others act towards or around you but you can change how you deal with them and their effects.

Luckily, her and I are no longer Facebook friends. I could only stand it for so long. Having been at this point once in my life, I realised that I wasn't so much wrong about who had made my life miserable but blaming him brought me no closure. It didn't allow me to move forward.

I often think of this quote and hope others actually listen and let things people have done to them go. It is the only way to take power away from the person who hurt you and set yourself free.


“When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.”  --Catherine Ponder

The most she will do is throw shadows at you

Once there was a mountain. It had always been what it was and would always be.

Mountains do grow and change with the weather, over the ages. Inside, they may be holding an upset tummy of molten rock or just be solid all the way through. Apart from the world breaking open beneath them, nothing phases a mountain. It always has been what it is and will always be.

Once there was a tornado. It had been other things prior to being a tornado and would most likely be something else in the future.

Tornadoes change so often and without warning that it is best to describe what stays most constant about them. There is the air bit. It is tumultuous. It is swirly whirly. It is looking for something but it has no idea what that actually is. It is still looking. Uplifting houses and breaking so permanent roads and throwing stuff around.

Once a tornado met a mountain. A tornado, mid-mix. A mountain, mid-consistency.

Now, tornadoes and mountains are not meant for each other no matter how much each tries. No matter how sincere the effort. No matter how noble the intent.

This tornado burst on to the scene with the immense energy that only a tornado has. There is no off button. There is no volume button. Buttons are for controlling things. Tornadoes don't have buttons.

The stoic mountain saw the destructive tornado arrive. They both appreciated that the other had amazing talents and latent power inside them. They both saw the merits of the other that would be good habits to adopt themselves. They became friends.

The problem with mountains (according to tornadoes) is that they move at a pace that challenges a snail but frustrates a tornado. And the problem with tornadoes (according to mountains) is that you can't get a tornado to maintain consistency long enough to get a message across.

The tornado and the mountain became great friends. They seemed for a while to find a stable middle ground.

The thing with tornadoes is that a stable middle ground seems an anti-pattern and they start to spin faster trying to re-centre until there is little method or control. This scares mountains. They see the destabilisation and plant their feet so as not to be moved by anything but damn time.

The thing is, a tornado will re-centre on their very own if they are given the time. Mountains have nothing but time. The only problem is when a mountain doesn't have the time to wait for the tornado.

Not that tornadoes aren't the problem in the first place.

So two beautiful, natural and wonderful friends lose each other.

They both feel the loss.

The mountain sees the tornado spin and smiles at the beauty of it in full flight.

The tornado sees the mountain as consistent as ever and closes it's eyes and just spins, hoping that it won't always be so painful.

Everything is as it was before. The mountain keeps being the mountain that it always was and always will be. The tornado throws a house at a shopping mall and wonders when it will help. Then the tornado wonders if being a cyclone might be better and sets plans in motion to change.

The world keeps spinning, unaffected.

To be

I always wanted to write things as much as I wanted to read them. When I was 15 years old, I spent a week at the NT News (one of the worst newspapers in Australia but my local) on work experience as a mini-journalist. That title I assigned myself. It taught me nothing of writing but a lot about advertising and entertainment.

None of what I wrote when I was young was written for anyone but me. The audience was me and at most my mother.

That meant I could be creative, crazy and chaotic without fear of judgement. A nice idea.

Then I started a blog and tried to write things that interested me but I thought would also interest other people. Maybe a little judgement and some learning. A nice idea.

What I realised very late was that it didn't matter what I wrote or who I wrote it for if the reason I was writing was to improve. All that ever mattered was that I wrote and wrote and wrote until I found my voice.

Wrote until the voice in words on a screen or paper sounded like the voice in my head.

Finding your voice online is like finding your voice on stage or on camera. It is about being yourself and not trying to sound like someone else. Of course, acting and fiction may be different but there is still a style that is yours. Part of you. Your essence.

So I keep writing so that it still sounds like me. And I keep sounding like me so I can keep writing.

Distraction

For a few years in my life recently, I would spend a lot of time distracting myself with activities and people so that I wouldn't have to think about all the awful stuff that had been my past life.

I made friends and spent wonderful moments with them. I still do.

I tried hobbies and developed life long skills that have extended who I am by leaps and bounds.

I read a few books and now have a library in my head and so many more to read.

The other day while waiting for some close friends to turn up to drinks at the Hyatt Graden Moet Bar, I was left with some time to myself. They were all about 30 minutes late and as usual, I was on time or early as usual.

I grabbed a glass of bubbly, a glass of water and then spent 25 minutes setting up my new phone that work gave me.

When everyone turned up, I was happy to show off my new phone and get right back in to people time.

The revealing moment though was that it is no longer about distracting myself from the horrors of reliving the past in my head. The moments alone are no longer lonely. I don't need to be distracted.

This is a huge thing. A big realisation. A giant step forward for Mana-kind.

A little bit of egg

I think it is funny that people think I am going to fall apart every time I say something crap happened in my life. One thing you should understand about me is that I'm an extrovert and articulating my thoughts lets me process them. That is why I write and talk and then feel better about it all.

Yes, I once fell apart so badly that I thought I would never put myself together and go down in the annals of history as another Humpty Dumpty. But I was sick then and am not now. Maybe Humpty was just depressed. I mean seriously, who sits on a wall when they are oddly shaped and unsuited for such things?

Like I always say and do, participate and take chances but never put so much of yourself in to anything that if it fails you will be lost. Life is far too short for long term sulking. Life is wonderful :)

6 months later

She had been in town for well over a year now and was a people collector. She had this magnetism that sucked people in and then she sealed it with her charm and that amazing smile. As he rounded the railing towards the down escalator, she caught his eye. It wasn't the way that a pretty girl catches a man's eye. No, it was the way you see someone in the corner of your eye and do a double take because you recognise them. This was an instant, faster than a blink of an eye. And the way he recognised her was different to running in to a friend. Time seemed to slow down. He remembered the way she smells. The way she'd breathe on his neck when she massaged his shoulders.

He didn't miss a step and strode on to the escalator.

She was air kissing a friend hello as she gave a wink and waved another goodbye. He didn't know if they were friends or colleagues or acquaintances? She had this outward consistency with people. The smile similar in every case. The message sincere, all the way up to her eyes. He never knew how she had the energy to give that to every person she came across. He did too but he kept the number of people much lower. Much much lower.

Before he was half way down the escalator, she had twirled around on those ridiculously high heels and was headed for the exit. There was a bounce in her step. He remembered that playful gait that always resulted in her bumping against him as she talked without a breath about many things, when they went for walks. He knew when she was happy. She was right now.

There was a day more than a year ago when he saw a her walking in the distance and he pulled up next to her in her stiletto over the knee boots and said "nice shoes" in his most casual voice. She didn't smile but said "hello" that time. He wondered what she would say this time. Much more had passed under the bridge since then. He left her. She had tried to convince him to stay but he left her anyway.

As he reached the bottom of the escalator and stepped off, he watched her happily skip away.

Collector

I collect memories of moments, to tell you at the end of the day.

There is no end of the day with you there anymore to hear me tell them.

I just keep collecting them.