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Quote by Sol Luckman

“Where we direct our attentive focus shapes and informs—literally and materially—our experienced reality. Prolonged attention creates greater intensity. Like a magnifying glass intensifying the sun’s rays, our attention amplifies whatever it focuses on. If we’re to be responsible creators of our experience, as opposed to haphazard victims of it, it’s incumbent on us to … attentively choose our path through the Matrix with utmost … attention to detail.”

Quote by Sol Luckman

Book:Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality
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Get Out of Here Alive: Inner Alchemy & Immortality

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Sol Luckman

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“Just as you can allow your outcomes to determine how you behave and react, you can also choose to reclaim your agency and apply it to your own circumstances. By exercising this unique right of selecting your own responses, you may turn from a victim to an agent who is more in control of your life.”

Mental HealthVictimhoodExercising Agency
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“...(S)uffering is universal. But victimhood is optional. There is a difference between victimization and victimhood. We are all likely to victimized in some way in the course of our lives. At some point we will suffer some kind of affliction or calamity or abuse, caused by circumstances or people or institutions over which we have little or no control. This is life. And this is victimization. It comes from outside. It's the neighborhood bully, the boss who rages, the spouse who hits, the lover who cheats, the discriminatory law, the accident that lands you in the hospital. In contrast, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization. We develop a victim's mind -- a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries. We become our own jailors when we choose the confines of the victim's mind.”

VictimhoodVictimization
Book:The Choice: Embrace the Possible
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“It is, however, not only undignified to idealize political victims; it is also very dangerous. One of our political actualities is that the victims of political torture and injustice are often no better than their tormentors. They are only waiting to change places with the latter. Of course, if one puts cruelty first this makes no difference. It does not matter whether the victim of torture is a decent man or a villain. No one deserves to be subjected to the appalling instruments of cruelty.”

JusticeMoralityCrueltyTorturePurityVictimhood
Book:Ordinary Vices
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“In the politics of eternity, the seduction by a mythicized past prevents us from thinking about possible futures. The habit of dwelling on victimhood dulls the impulse of self-correction. Since the nation is defined by its inherent virtue rather than by its future potential, politics becomes a discussion of good and evil rather than a discussion of possible solutions to real problems. Since the crisis is permanent, the sense of emergency is always present; planning for the future seems impossible or even disloyal. How can we even think of reform when the enemy is always at the gate?”

PastPoliticsFutureEternityCrisisMythsVictimhoodMagaEmergency
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“Being a rape victim just sucked, for a while. Sometimes, though, without meaning to be, I was proud: I have suffered, and that entitled me to something, but I didn’t know what. Everyone seemed to be reaching deep into the crevices of their souls to find oozing gobs of pain, and if that pain was parented by some distant generation that spent brutal winters chasing diminishing herds after its own numbers had dwindled from the settler’s diseases and brute force, it seems ever more potent, wrapped around our DNA double-helixes. A pain so old begins to feel like predestination, locking every generation into more, whether that’s the truth or something I tell myself because I like the pain. Even more, I savor the twisted prestige of inheriting old hurts most people only read about in history books.”

PainColonialismVictimhood
Author:Elissa Washuta
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“How could you do that to me?" I repeat. I don´t have to itemize. He knows what I speak of. Eventually N produces three answers, in this order: 1. "Because I am a complete rotter." I silently agree, but it´s a cop-out: I have maggots, therefore I am dead. 2. "I was stressed at work and unhappy and we were always fighting...and you know I was just crazy..." I cut him off, saying, "You don´t get to be crazy. You did exactly what you chose to do." Which is true, he did. It is what he has always done. He therefore seems slightly puzzled at the need for further diagnosis, which may explain his third response: 3. "I don´t know." This, I feel instinctively, is the correct answer. How can I stay angry with him for being what he is? I was, after all, his wife, and I chose him. No coincidences, that´s what Freud said. None. Ever. I wipe my eyes on my sleeve and walk toward the truck, saying to his general direction, "Fine. At least now I know: You don´t know." I stop and turn around and fire one more question: a bullet demanding attention in the moment it enters the skin and spreads outward, an important bullet that must be acknowledged. "What did you feel?" After a lengthy pause, he answers. "I felt nothing." And that, I realize too late, was not the whole truth, but was a valid part of the truth. Oh, and welcome to the Serengeti. That too.”

RelationshipsMarriageDivorceDeceptionCheatingInfidelityBreaking Up
Book:Split: A Memoir of Divorce
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