Being a victim

21st September 2019

Dr Lennon’s Sunday Musings

Last week, I had a consultation with a pet owner, let’s call her Ms W. It was a bit of an interesting consultation as I have never met Ms W before, though I have treated her dog, Betsy, for the past year. Betsy had been brought in my Mr R, Ms W’s friend, all this time. Ms W suffers from ill health and has thus relied on Mr R to run her errands, which included vet visits.

Upon completing my consultation with Ms W, I learnt several things. I learnt that pretty much 80% of my advice for Betsy, her dog was not received by her for the past year. I also learnt that she did not really have any idea what she was entitled to being a member of the practice. She had also lost out on various opportunities that were provided to her. Last but not least, she confessed that Mr R was using Betsy (with the excuse of dog walking) to get close to her romantically. She felt like she was a victim and decided to take things into her own hands. She then chose to bring Betsy in herself for the consultation and declared that she was going do so for future appointments. Basically, she had chosen to take charge of her life and not be a victim.

In life, it can be so easy to be a victim in many situations. It can be tough. Some can blame it on the poor family background, broken family, poor education, not being born with a silver spoon, the ‘system’, not having good grades, medical issues, bad weather, being a foreigner, not having good friends, having a bad job, bad luck, lack of opportunity and the list goes on. I am not saying that any ‘reason’ mentioned above cannot happen to anyone or worse still, more than one of the above has happened. What I am saying is that, we always have a choice to choose how we see events that have happened to us.

Sometimes, bad things happen to anyone, even to good people and that is just life. There may not be any rhyme or reason and we can go crazy trying to rationalize things. Sometimes, Mr Murphy just decides to pay more attention to a particular individual and make him (or her) his best friend temporarily or maybe even for a prolonged period of time.

We have the choice of being the victim, accepting our fate, allowing the event to sap our life force, bring us down and thinking, “I am like this because this happened to me”. Or we can simply declare to ourselves, “I will not be a victim” and use that misfortune to give us strength instead to achieve greater things. Ms W had taken control, made a statement to herself and pushed herself out of her comfort zone by bringing her beloved Betsy to the vets for the first time. It serves a great reminder to me that we can easily succumb to victim mode and allow events to drain us. It also inspired me to be grateful for my blessings and achieve all my goals.

If you are pushing towards your goals against all odds, I salute and support you. If you are still feeling like a victim, I encourage you to find the little bit of strength to take little steps consistently and when you are standing up tall and proud, no longer feeling like anything can hold you back, the path to your dreams will be waiting for you.

I am who I choose to be. I am not what happened to me.

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