I came across this blog post recently, and it really struck a nerve. At first I was mentally disparaging the woman it talks about, and all the other perennial victims like her that seem to be pop up constantly these days. And let me tell you, did I ever feel morally superior.

Then I got thinking about her complete lack of gratitude, and realized I’m every bit as guilty. I spend lots of time playing victim in my mind, rather than focusing on being grateful for my countless blessings.

As I thought more about it, a memory from a long-ago bicycle ride came back to me.

When I lived in Georgia years ago, I fell in with love torturing myself on the mountain roads up north. One particular day I drove up for a solo ride, parking at the bottom of Neels Gap and setting off on a 50 mile ride with three painful mountain climbs.

About 8 miles in, and after about 1,500 feet of climbing, I reached the top of Neels Gap and pulled off the road at the wayside there to get some water. As I did I immediately saw a guy on what I took to be a regular recumbent bicycle sitting near the water tap. As I rode up I said hello without really looking at him, and immediately began filling my bottle. The other rider was right behind me, and we made small talk while I topped off.

As I closed my water bottle I turned around to look at him, and was shocked to see his bike was no normal recumbent, but actually a hand-crank job, and he was obviously a paraplegic.

As smoothly as I could, I worked a question into our conversation: “Do you have any use of your legs at all?”

He said, “Just enough strength in my quadriceps to brace myself some while I’m cranking.”

I asked him where he was headed. He told me he was just finishing up. Like me, he’d parked at the bottom of Neels, but much earlier in the morning. He’d already ridden over Neels, then on and over Jack’s Gap (another very challenging climb) to the bottom on the other side – then he’d turned around and come back the same way, doing the same two climbs again!

I realized as we began to part ways that he’d already done more elevation that day than I would do – all with his arms and what little leg support he had. I told him, “Man, you’re my hero.”

He said, “Hey, thanks, but I’m no hero. I’m just out here enjoying the riding same as you.”

Would anybody blame this guy if he’d decided just to sit in a wheelchair and let himself go to pot? I know I wouldn’t. I could sure see myself in his situation obsessing over what I’d lost. He, on the other hand, was out there maximizing what he still had.

Every single one of us can legitimately consider himself a victim. Who hasn’t had unfair misfortune, or been mistreated by others?

Then too, every single one of us has the choice in how to respond to feeling victimized. (Pretty much none of us will experience that fact to the extent that Dr. Viktor Frankl did; surviving the Nazi concentration camps but losing his entire family, he never lost his spirit: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”)

I think it’s a very, very sad development in our culture over the last couple generations that we actually encourage victimhood, even reward it. But really, there’s no reward big enough to make it worth it to wallow in bitterness, is there?

Me, I’m going to make a renewed effort to ward off my own tendency to play victim. When I feel it coming on, I’ll just remember a guy who had more climbing glory than I did that long-ago day in North Georgia, putting my leg-powered racing machine to shame with his hand-cranked recumbent.

Oh, yeah, pal – you sure are a hero.

 

Postscript: while I was still putting the finishing touches on this piece today, I came across this article. What an amazing young woman Lauren is. And she reminded me of my dear friend Maureen, who also went through breast cancer treatment with a strength that was awe-inspiring. And then, contemplating these two heroines made me remember my favorite historian Cornelius Ryan, who not only refused to be a victim during his own cancer battle, but helped the patients around him do the same. (“What I’m trying to tell you is — don’t be afraid.  Not of hospitals or attendants or anybody.  You’re you — not a statistic.  Be yourselves, damn it.  Don’t be afraid.”)

I bet that for every “professional victim” we read or hear about in the media or see around us, there are many, many more heroic non-victims like the ones I’ve mentioned. We just have to look around and pay attention when we need them for inspiration.