Surviving Victimization

My cousin asked me, "How did you survive all the victimization in your life?" He is 67 and I 62 and from my age 5 and his age 9 we grew up (he to 17 when he went off to college) and me to 21 in the same town a lot like brothers since at that time we both were only children.

I turned to him and said, "I never saw myself as a victim. I consciously manipulated everything in my life to my advantage at all times." I saw the surprised look in his very intelligent eyes and he said, "I guess that's why you are still here now because you took control at all points."

I knew of course he was referring to:
Whooping Cough
Blunt Trauma childhood epilepsy
being raised by my parents in a cult
being molested as a child
being excommunicated from that cult at 21
being a single parent at 29
getting divorced for a second time at 47
getting remarried and having another child
almost dying at 50 and having to retire early
being diagnosed with a hypothyroid condition at 58
realizing that I could still live a really long time at 58
still going strong at 62

Whether you are a victim or not in life depends upon your attitude. My attitude has always been:
"I'm going to survive no matter what it takes. So get out of my way."
And strangely enough this was always combined with a deep feeling of compassion for all life everywhere. And this compassion came from my own suffering and realizing that everyone else was suffering too.

So, when I first understood Buddhism in college as an adult it started to make a lot of sense to me, even though I was raised like many Americans in a very dualistic Christian world. So, moving from defining everything as good or bad to feeling compassion for all life everywhere was much easier for me to do than many other people who were less empathetic to all others around them. So, seeing that trying to equate everything in life as just good or bad I found to be very juvenile and ridiculous as an intelligent adult. Rather, I found that compassion for myself and all beings was a much more useful place to start.

Trying to define life as good and bad is like being a child and wondering when the boogeyman is going to come out from under the bed and get you. It is childish. Reality actually exists in sort of infinite shades of gray and not just light or dark with an on/off switch.

So, adulthood then for me was learning to have compassion for all beings and all classes of beings. Once I did that I also had compassion for myself as one of these trillions of suffering beings in the universe. Once I had compassion for myself I stopped punishing myself so much like most people do.
I realized that I deserved to have a good life and that all beings deserve a good life and a good chance at creating that good life here on earth and beyond. So, what is the first step in surviving victimization?
Having compassion for oneself so one can then have the possibility of surviving whatever has happened. Once you develop compassion for yourself then you can develop compassion for all other beings as well. If you can stop blaming yourself and have compassion for yourself there is hope for you. If not, there won't be hope until you develop compassion for yourself and others.