I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. (Deuteronomy 30:19)
“…If you were a more sensitive soul, you may have been injured by the numerous selfish people that you met along the way; and they are everywhere (welcome to the human condition). Some of these wounds can last a lifetime, leaving you feeling stupid, unwanted, second best and so on…”
“…We must accept what happens to us. That doesn’t mean that we like it or that it is fair. Life is not fair… We all want to rage at the world, or crawl into a depressed spot when we feel the injustice and randomness of our pain.
“Or perhaps you were traumatized by an accident, an illness, a corrupt business deal, a rapist, the death of a child, Mother Nature. All this happens in this world and it may happen to any of us… When injured by others or by circumstance, I encourage you to feel it all; the outrage, the hurt… This is grief work and it is a necessary part of healing… Grief brings you through pain to disbelief, to anger, to “only ifs” to profound sadness, to loss – and then to acceptance. It gets triggered again and again, like tsunamis of anguish that take you over when you least expect it. But, over time grief does get worked through. The wound heals, even if imperfectly. We are left with acceptance…
“You can stay mired in your sense of injustice and self righteousness. You can develop an entire personality around your victimhood. But what purpose does it provide?… Very often, it was an injured soul or group that hurt you in the first place. A cycle of victims and oppressors does our species little good.
“We must accept. Not in the classic Buddhist sense of non attachment. We should be attached. A wrong is a wrong; and it needs to be righted if possible. But we must start with the understanding that what happened to us is part of the quixotic human condition… Radically accept your [relatives’] stupid (but human) mistake. It cost you. No question. You are angry and perhaps have a chip on your shoulder… This kind of acceptance is the end stage of healthy grief…
“To accept means to see things clearly. It reinforces the notion not to give a second chance to someone who doesn’t deserve it…”
© Mark R Banschick, MD