Kevin's Watch

In the Tank, Tjol raised this question:

[D]oes personal tragedy cause people to rise above more often, or to imitate the criminal that brought the tragedy about more often?

This question could also extend to how much any catastrophe can coerce down any personality path.

Personally, I think the event only initiates a need to calibrate, or overcome the effects of the events. The nature of this calibration will determine what I become. For example, a man beats me up and takes my ice cream cone. To over come this, I may need to:

1)Overcome a low self image of myself
2)Enact vengence against the man
3)Buy myself another ice cream cone.
4)Combination of the above.

Different approaches for different needs. If I just need an ice cream cone, I'm not going to imitate the ice cream thief.

I have reacted differently to different personal tragedies in my life. My feeling is that it is much like the duckling that just hatches, what do you imprint on first. Basically if you have someone to "imprint" on at the beginning you process the incident differently than if you turn inward and never process it. Once it goes inward with no feedback from the outside world perspective gets warped.

During the summer between high school and college (and on weekends for much of the next year), I worked with the family of a friend to help them build a new home. Shortly after the completion of the house, we all went to the beach to celebrate. Overnight while we were away, the house burned to the ground. My friend, his father and I were the first to get back to the site.

I already looked up to my friend's father a great deal, and how he handled this situation only cemented that admiration. He walked around the perimeter of the house slowly, looking at the remains of the house that he had designed and we all had spent a year building. He packed and lit his pipe, then said " A man does not often get a chance to correct his mistakes. There are a few things I can do differently when we rebuild."

That was all he had to say.

About a year later, the new house was complete. It was better. Nearly thirty-five years later, it is still there.

That's an amazing story!!!!

But why did the house burn down????

lorin wrote:I have reacted differently to different personal tragedies in my life. My feeling is that it is much like the duckling that just hatches, what do you imprint on first. Basically if you have someone to "imprint" on at the beginning you process the incident differently than if you turn inward and never process it. Once it goes inward with no feedback from the outside world perspective gets warped.

I tend to feel things get warped by the outside world.

Rudyard Kipling wrote:If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

Awesome story SD.

Everybodies response to personal tragedy is different. I don't think there's a way to determine what response will be. It may depend on many factors, including what the tragedy was, and when it occured during my development.

--A

I have to preface this by saying, though I've given it a lot of thought, I don't know why this is so for me, or why the changes happened, which annoys me, I really like why answers, but:
When I was young-ish, set-backs that were environmental enraged me and I'd beat up walls or whatever...if it was a person, revenge preferably violent and personal was obligatory.
Some things happened, and I can't sort out which/when/how changed things...
Whatever the cause now [person or circumstance] if it harms me, it's "ah, well." and I just go on.
If it harms someone else though, [someone I care about, or even strangers if I happen to be on scene] I don't have that disassociation: I'll turn the cheek if I'm attacked, but fight for others near, I feel worse when someone close loses a loved one than when I do myself.

I agree, and it has always been a source of confusion for me as well. I can easily forgive offenses against me, but to others... for the longest time I'd have to try very hard not to break the offenders face. Now, I'm considerably more levelheaded, but I still get the anger.

Av, thank you for the very appropriate quote from Kipling's "If", a poem my grandfather had me memorize at an early age. I did not appreciate the lesson then, but surely came to do so as I matured...a process still underway, as any who know me will attest.

Orlion, we still do not know for sure why the house burnt. The official reason was spontaneous combustion, but we had left no oily rags or other such materials laying about. We had called down a local youth for shooting at wildlife on the property a week or so earlier, but there is no evidence that the fire was arson or other malicious mischief. It's a mystery...

Yeah, I've always loved it. My father taught it to me at an early age too. That, Gunga Din, and Burns' A Man's A Man For A' That are ones that particularly come to mind on that theme.

For the other's, life is too short to let the actions of others have such power over your emotions and reactions.

--A