The other day I was in my Spanish class and my teacher told us a story of something that happened to her when she was in her early twenties and how it changed her life.As an undergraduate, she was party girl who skipped class to party or go to work. When she was about 23 her close friend was killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver and that made her turn her life around and made her focus on school again. The overall point of her story was that she believes in us.
However, she went on to bash Americans and say that we don’t know how it is to struggle and we don’t appreciate what we have because at least we are able put food on the table for our families and ourselves. She insinuated that people who come to America on a Visa to get an education are more studious and take school more seriously. Now if we manage to look past the ignorance in parts of her argument it appears she has a valid point. America hasn’t been the victim of what most countries have been through; if anything America is the perpetrator.
All of this got me thinking: Can there be a world where no one is a victim? How could our world possibly rotate without someone being a victim of something? What role would social workers, counselors, lawyers or presidents play without victims? You may think no one deserves to be a victim. In the end, life’s foundation is what you think you deserve in life. You put energy out to the world and you can’t receive anything great if your mind is blocked with the “should haves” “could haves” “not suppose to” and hoping something does or doesn’t happen. We all have to put some kind of work into what we feel we deserve in life whether it’s a sticker for doing a good job, or a vacation to reward yourself for all your hard work. Along with all this hard work, someone usually is stepped over or on.
We need to see and/or experience how it is to be the victim to know what we do and do not want for ourselves or our families and loved ones. We can’t all be successful in everything we do, and often times we fall victim for someone else to succeed.
Will we let that stop us?