Vibrations

Chapter 13

I sat for a while in the darkness, sipping from the bottle. I thought of my little girl and all the things I had missed...

I started to fall into a well of self-pity again...

Then I realized something that drove shame straight into the heart of me...

I thought of a lesson my dad had taught me. Some trivial thing, but something important nonetheless...

I had gotten some bad grades from a teacher that didn't like me. My dad had gotten pissed at me, and I had done what every other kid since the beginning of time had done. I had blamed the teacher. I had told him she was out to get me...

He went and met the teacher, and had a conference with her. When he came home, he looked me straight in the eye and told me I was right, that lady really did hate me, and she was going to do everything in her power to make sure I failed her class...

I looked at him with vindication and asked when he was pulling me out of the class. He told me that there was no way he was going to do that. That I needed to learn a lesson about the world... sometimes life isn't fair.

I had argued, pointing out that the grades she was giving me were unfair and he looked at me and asked, "If you walk down a dark alley, and a guy jumps out of the shadows, beats the shit out of you and takes your wallet, who's fault is it?"

"The robber's" I had screamed, "He shouldn't be robbing people."

Dad had nodded sagely, "And maybe that's the lesson you learn. You're the victim. So, the next night, you walk down the same dark alley, and the same guy jumps out, and beats your ass, and takes your wallet... now who's at fault?"

I wanted to say it was still the robber's fault. No matter what decisions someone else makes, nobody has the right to be a criminal...

But I also realized, in that situation I would be at fault too... I had a choice. I could walk down that alley, or I could learn my lesson and go a different way...

"Well, it would be both of our faults..." I mumbled.

Dad nodded sagely, "Now the next night, you walk down that same alley, and the same guy jumps out, beats your ass and takes your wallet. Now who's at fault?"

I gave him what I'm sure now was a smart assed look, "Okay, at some point, you need to learn your lesson and realize that something is going to go badly. Now you'd be at fault for making yourself into a victim."

He smiled at me, "But if that's true the third time, doesn't it make it true the first time?"

I sat and thought about it...

"Now, bad things can happen, but when they do, if the only lesson you take out of them is that you're the victim, the same thing is just going to keep on happening..."

I sat and thought about it, "I don't see what that has to do with this teacher crapping on my grades."

He shrugged, "Yeah, she gave you some bad grades. That's true. Who turned in the work? Who gave her room to give them bad grades? When you got the first one, what did you do? Did you improve the quality of the work? Or did you throw up your hands and make yourself a victim and keep walking down that same dark alley?"

I had stayed in that class... I improved the work I was doing. In the end, I had pulled my grade up from a D to a B. I learned two important lessons that day. The first was that there were ways to make sure that the quality of the work you did was so good, there was no way that someone could shit on it...

The second lesson I had learned, was that no matter what happened, you weren't a victim. Everything that happens gives you a chance to learn from it. That lesson may suck. It may hurt, but how you responded to it determined who you were. You could learn and make yourself stronger, and smarter, or you could sit there in the mud and cry, and point a finger.