Dear bloggers,

I tend to believe in the mentality of the survivor and the victor rather than the victim.  Thank God for the survivors!  We wouldn’t have the world we have—we wouldn’t make the strides we do—if it wasn’t for the happy survivor, the happy warrior.

In a previous post, we talked about propaganda art.  I think that that kind of art is about chronicling things that didn’t go right.  I think survivor art is about how we can come out the other end, no matter how long it takes us.  Whole people, changed absolutely, more knowledgeable?  Absolutely.  Happier?  Absolutely, although how we make that happen is up to us.

For me personally, maybe I’m just too stupid to be unhappy.  There’s a saying in the Christian tradition:  All things work together for good for those who love God.  In a way, that’s a very puzzling statement.  How can a 2-year-old getting killed in an automobile accident, or your husband or son getting killed in war, be good?  I don’t know.  I’ll go to my grave wondering about those kinds of things.

But having been in the funeral business, I saw transition:  where, over time, things become not acceptable, but real.  They happened.  I always think:  If a bad thing has happened, it happened to a person who is gone from the scene.  But if it kills the spirit of all around them, then that disaster has killed more spirits than just the one.  It’s like throwing a pebble into a pond.  I like it to just go sinking straight down, and the rings go inward like a toilet flushing:  All the crap goes down and doesn’t come up again.  That’s probably a goofy way of looking at things, but the sooner we flush the negativity out of our system and go forward and live our lives—changed, hurt, different, but also wiser, stronger, more able to help others—the the sooner we attain the strength of survivors.  And that strength, I believe, is to be a helper, not a victim; to be a victor and a luminary in a dark place where others are still looking for the light.

The world we live in is the world between our two ears.  If you want to be depressed, the world is full of things to be depressed about.  I could be depressed if I wanted to:  poor me, sit in a corner, suck my thumb, rub silk on my ear, then I’m out of the fray, and nobody gives a shit!  Instead, I get up, put on my clown suit and my clown face, and off I go, singing my Little Orphan Annie song:  “The sun’ll come out tomorrow!”

Matt