Who is the Victim?

Photo by cottonbro

What a pity that the weakest link crafted a plan without knowing that because he is the weakest link, he gets to be the victim in the end while reading the whole thing in reverse. Well, that maybe is the point of being stubborn or not being of sound mind.

But before you suspect me of speaking in tongues, what exactly is a victim?

There are a few definitions from Thesaurus.com that interest me:

• someone sacrificed
• object of ridicule
• a person who is fooled
• fall guy
• stupid or ridiculous person
• a person who takes blame for another action

With these few definitions, who would ever want to be a victim?No one, of course. Unless one does not know he, or she, is a victim.

But is that possible that a person may not know that he, or she, is a victim? Without being attentive, one could be used to take the blame for the misconduct of another person, for example. 

An unsound person can become the fall guy, an easy target for the charlatans. The rationale is that some human beings are evil, and the victim does not even know they are.

Some people use other people for their ulterior and evil motives. Believe me, they exist. Quite a handful, actually. This is why we misconstrue that intentions are most often harmful. 

We all share the good and the bad, no exemption, only that there are people with convictions higher than the rest.

But to victimize or prey on others’ weaknesses is unimaginable. It is like murder, a pre-meditated act of crime.

It’s the Life in our Years

Photo by Yan Krukov

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. – Abraham Lincoln

Aging is inevitable. I saw a list of the signs of aging somewhere. I picked some in the list that seems easy to remember as indicators:

1. If you lose your SENSE OF HUMOR, you KNOW you are growing older! (Good grief! Thankful I have not lost it yet. Thanks to those who still laugh at my one-liners.)
2. Muscle mass decreases on average about 7 lbs per decade. .. this loss accelerates after age 45. (Oh, my, I am past 45! Wonder how much of my muscle mass decreased.)
3. Fat increases as a percentage of body weight. (All I am thinking now is BMI! It says I am overweight.)
4. The strength, energy, and speed of the body decrease. (Uhmm… I dread the day that it will take me 10 minutes to walk from the door to the sofa.)
5. Blood pressure increases. (I was hypertensive for more than a decade now.)
6. We lose neurons in the brain. This leads to Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Senile Dementia. (I worry about this. My father had Alzheimer’s disease, and it was not easy for the people around him to deal with it.)
7. Testosterone in men, and estrogen and progesterone in women, drop. (Believe me, it is not big of a deal.)
8. Sexual desire drops. (Sadly.)
9. Sense of hearing drops. (It dropped a notch, but I survived!)
10. Sense of taste drops… “everything tastes the same.” (I dread the moment I cannot appreciate good food.)

I stopped reading. It scares me to read more. I will be growing old someday. That is a fact. 

Of course, there will be ways to slow it down or remedy some symptoms. But it is inevitable.

It is not the years, Abraham said. It’s the life in our years. The question we need to answer is – do I have a life? I did not get to become filthy rich but compared to my life when I was younger, I consider myself rich. Being prosperous and successful is subjective anyway. Life, I believe, is not about achievements and success but what we did and are doing with our success and achievements.

Life is not about the multitude of ‘friends.’ Life is about the impact we cause our friends. The numbers do not count, but the quality of friendship with our friends.

Life is about family, of consanguinity or affinity, that basic unit in the society where we belong. It is what defines us; it is our reflection. The many things in our family embody us; it is our constitution.

Life is how we play fair in every aspect of our lives. It is about how we chose to keep silent when we wanted to talk; it is about how we did not speak instead of fighting against someone who tried to bring us down. It is how we believe that things end and that justice will always be served in whatever form the One above chose to be.

I do not know when my candle will extinguish. Here’s hoping that the remaining years of my life will be fruitful and of quality.