Victim or Victor: What will YOU choose?
12 May 2009
8 Comments
When you touch a pine cone, the scales are sun-burnt and stiff. It looks dead which makes you wonder what its purpose is. Why do so many of them fall on the emerald grass?
Inside each pine cone, there are thousands of seeds for new trees but the seeds are never planted until …a wild fire. Yes, that’s right. When wild fires occur, the pine cones explode and all seeds are sown. That’s how new and healthy trees are born.
Sometimes, you have wild fires too. Gruesome grades, deep debt, fight with fathers, Depression diagnosis are all wild fires. Everyone has fires raging through their life. Some choose to focus on the burns and come out as victims. While intelligent fire fighter use burns to become victors.
For victims, wild fire means paralysis while for, it means catalysis. Catalysis for terrific trees. What do you see, paralysis or catalysis?
One of my best teachers solidifies this valuable lesson through math symbol: the square root (see below).
At Position 1, your line of vision is only as high as the dotted line. Not much sunshine there. Then LIFE happens, gruesome grades, deep debt or fight with father. That’s called LIFE. With this painful event, LIFE pushes til you hit black bottom, the lowest point of the square root. At black bottom, victims are defines and victors are refined.
Victims stay there and say ‘misery, thy name is moi.’ Victims parade around with their sob story hungry for any sympathtic ear.
Victors also feel pain. They are human after all. The difference is they put a cap on their grief period. They allow and accept pain and sadness but only for a fixed time.
Once their grief self-imposed deadline is up, they get on their heels and look for ways to climb to Position 2. Once they find ways, they start climbing and eventually reach the top. They know that in order for them to go up, they must come down first. Thus, hitting black bottom is not so black for them. And once at the top, they enjoy the shimmering sun.
But how do victors get from Position 1 to Position 2. They use 3 simple steps:
1. Victors believe everything is beneficial
They know there is good in the lovely and the low because the Prophet sallahu alayhi wasalaam said so:
“How wonderful is the affair of the believer, for his affairs are all good, and this applies to no one but the believer. If something good happens to him, he is thankful for it and that is good for him. If something bad happens to him, he bears it with patience and that is good for him.” (Muslim).
Victors are thankful during terrific times and learn lessons during lows by asking: In what way is this situation BETTER for me?
2. Wild fires refine you or define you
Victors keep this in full focus. They know they always have a choice to be refined into a gem or defined to dirt, to climb or crash. And they choose to climb. That’s how they make it to the top. They get in the driver’s seat and drive. Do you have the keys to your car and who is driving your life?
3. Have you called Allah lately?
Victors constantly call Allah. They have Allah on ‘speed dial’ because they trust Him 130%. Unlike their best buddy, victors never get a busy signal when they call Allah. They know that the ‘painful’ LIFE came from Allah so they call Him for help to master LIFE.
When will you call Allah? And when you do, can you put in a good du’a for me as well :)
How has this post benefited you?
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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like the one I’m writing in which you’ve gladly agreed to share your experiences. Thank you for your help!
). I recently suffered a severe nervous breakdown due to all my “problems” in life. At that time, I was wishing for something, a burst of sunshine, to pull me up from the deep bottom. This ayah that Nade posted really hit home for me, and I wish I had read it/heard it at that time.
(4.83 out of 5)
Assalamualaikum,
MashALlah, fantastic article. I guess the most important thing is to keep this advice in mind while you’re actually going through one of those low moments. And of course, most importantly, turn to Allah.
Salaam,
~ N
12 May 2009 at 2:17 am