You seem like a fairly positive guy. With all of your health problems, how do you keep a positive outlook in life? Is it only your Christian beliefs or is there also a mentality or philosophy that you have adopted to look at the bright side of things?I appreciate that you interpret my attitude as positive, but quite honestly, it is one of resignation.
I have spent my entire life struggling with disabilities and all the patronizing even well-meaning people offer along with it, alcoholic parents, and various streaks of bad luck in order to accomplish what I wanted in life. I did all that because that is what you are supposed to do.
But I ultimately lost. That is what happens. Some people are born with a golden horseshoe shoved up their butts ad others run and run and run and run but never make it to first base. The world be bops along regardless of which one you are. It is fate beyond our control. Whether you personally want to call it part of a Divine plan or random chaos--I think the former--it was always going to be that way.
There are a couple things I have learned about how to display my attitude about it. The first is, oddly enough, echoed by Heath Ledger’s version of the Joker in The Dark Knight It may sound silly, but hear me out. It comes when he is meeting with Harvey Dent in the hospital after announcing he is going to kill the mayor. He tells Dent he planned to kill the mayor just to watch people panic because they would never expect the mayor to be an assassination target. It does not fill their expectations, therefore it is shocking.
People are not bothered when their expectations are filled, even if those expectations are horrific. They hear a humvee full of soldiers in Iraq were killed yesterday and do not bat an eye. They will have the same reaction if some kid in the ghetto gets shot in a gang war. Because that is what happens. Soldiers and kids in gang neighborhoods die. And cripples have their health impede their life goals. It is not really a tragedy by most anyone. Expectations have been fulfilled.
The secod thing I have learned is that even sympathetic soul expect you to get over it relatively quickly. The world does not stop for broken hearts, you know? I watched my mother, from the day my stepfather died in 1997 until she took her own life I 2003, fall into despair and anger over the world moving on. Granted, she had some emotional issues I do not have which impeded her coping skills, but I learned much in those six years about how you either have to adjust to loss or end your life.
That is my philosophy on it. I have written about the related subject of redemptive suffering, if you are interested in my more Christian thoughts on the subject.
