There are people who don’t like to use the word ‘victim’, for it may imply a ‘victim mentality’. My observations of victim stories since 1998 reminds me of my mum who used to tell me: “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

People who have been victimised can take their experiences as a challenge and become proud when they learned to master them – for at least having tried their best! This is the conclusion that the 75-year old victim turned starfighter has come to who sent me this marvellous poem:

Tell me not of mournful numbers,
‘Life is but an empty dream!’
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem -

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;

‘Dust thou art, to dust returnest
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Finds us farther than today.

Art is long, and time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!

Be a hero of the strife!
Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!

Act – act in the living Present!
Heart within, with God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of Time;
Footprints, which perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s restless main,
A forlorn, shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up, and doing
With a heart for any fate -
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour, and to wait . ..

The Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

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