I have received some feedback on the post Why I Never Write You, to the effect that I need to not take on such a wretched, pitiful self-image. I must admit, reading over it now, that it seems to have come from a rather bad place.

At the risk of sounding terribly Californian, I think one thing I inherited from my Mother is victim consciousness.  What this is, is to take oneself as the passive victim of (presumably hostile) circumstances, and to underestimate one's own role as the author of one's life.  This is what the better sort of new-ager means when they parrot such slogans as "You create your own reality".  To put it differently, mental health is here equated with a sense of one's own agency, and with an approach to life that is creative and constructive, flowing from one's sense of oneself as a creator and constructor. 

These new-agers are, in a sense, terribly wrong; and yet, they are also not entirely un-right.  Their wrongness lies in a lack of compassion, and also in the failure to recognize that, whatever their origin, bad situations and circumstances are real, and quite efficacious in crushing the spirit and rendering it weak.  Great traditions like Christianity and Buddhism, or even Existentialism, have always held very close to their core a sense of the darkness and peril of our lives, and the reality of suffering.  One who is blind to the reality of others' suffering is morally retarded, and spiritually hamstrung. 

So what's right?  Well, those who view themselves as victims tend to respond to life as victims - fighting, perhaps, against the forces that oppress them, but not properly seizing the reins.  In fact, if one simply pays attention and reflects, one sees, in world-historical figures like Jesus, or Napoleon, that a person composed of the same body parts as us, and the same sort of mind, presumably burdened with the same cravings, aversions, and weaknesses that burden us, can cause tremendous shifts in the direction of their own lives and the general development of the world.  We can be affected by circumstances, it is true, but what we make of those is rather up to us.  One needs only food, water, and occasional protection from the elements, and any competent individual can acquire these easily if they put a mind to it - even if this means eating squirrels and sleeping under a bush. The rest is blind prejudice and acquired craving, and utterly unnecessary.  So what, then, can anyone really do to us?  Certainly, we can be killed or injured through violence, but this happens very rarely, and is really not a realistic thing to be concerned over most of the time, for most people.  What can we do?  We can live at peace, easily.  We can even turn our minds to the arts of persuasion, of construction, of art and technology and do something or make something.  I often reflect on the Watts Towers, which were literally assembled from trash, or my own home, which was assembled in the early 20th century from debris by poor people with no resources other than rubble. 

The Buddha was utterly without resources, and homeless, and yet he found, by his own account, everything he or anyone could possibly hope for, and this by his own efforts.  So, the simple matter of negotiating a proper life for oneself should be no great shakes by comparison.