VICTIMS

I had a remarkable non-conversation today. Peter and I invited a guest for a Christmas luncheon. The guest was known to Peter and relatively unknown to me. The whole occasion ended badly. I am still trying to figure it out, if that is at all possible to do without knowing what was going on with this person. 

The occasion started amiably enough. Peter and I picked the guest up this person's newly acquired home in wealthy neighborhood. We received a thorough tour but were not encouraged to sit or take refreshment.  The original art was explained. The custom furniture pieces were explained. All very nice.

I drove us back to ours for lunch. I had been forced by an impending storm to push the date back a day, so my lunch was not as elaborate as I had hoped. Three dishes and dessert. We offered our guest a place and choice of beverage. Then we gathered the food and placed it on the table. I suppose my first inkling that something was amiss was our guest's refusal to even look at the one meat dish I had prepared in this person's honor, since Peter and I function as meatless eaters at home. Our guest has repeatedly declared carnivore pride. In hopes of easing our guest's shyness over consuming meat, Peter and I both ate a little of the meat dish. Still our guest neither acknowledged disinterest in or the existence of the meat dish. I hesitated to repeat my offer of the dish for fear of offending. 

This person, who has also proudly declared a hearty appetite previously, ate very little and never indicated why. I will say here that this is not usually the case with my cooking. I am not a Michelin chef, but I know how to cook and bake. I also cook several cuisine's fairly well. 

We were having a casual conversation about something and wandered into personal philosophy. Our guest placed both hands down on the table and declared, "I don't think any individual can change the world in any way. It all just happens." I was astounded. This pronouncement, delivered with papal finality, seemed very unlikely coming from a highly educated parent and grandparent. So, I instinctively tried to find out what inspired it. I began by disagreeing and supplied several examples from my own life. No such sharing ensued from our guest. Just a repeated assertion of nihilism. 

After asking half dozen specific questions about it which were not really answered, this person became agitated. "I feel attacked and demeaned!" I was horrified. My questions had been simply put and calmly stated, as were my responses. I looked over at Peter. He too looked surprised. I assured our guest I had no intention of demeaning or attacking in the least. And, when I asked what it was about my interest in this person's motivations seemed intrusive or belittling, I was told that my inquiry about that was also attacking and demeaning. I became totally flummoxed. "Do you feel you are being victimized?" I asked. The response was, "See ... you are doing it again!"

After I explained my motivation and philosophical base in mindfulness and responsibility, Peter chimed in and explained to our guest, whom he has known for many years, that he felt my working with people in care-giving professions was quite different from their shared backgrounds in more office-based professions. This explanation was rejected flatly and angrily. The atmosphere was so electric with our guest's rage that I called an end to the day's activities. Despite this person's melodramatic gesture of calling a cab on a smart phone, our guest accepted my offer of a ride home. That ride was silent and tense. This person made no attempt to diffuse the tension. I decided not to speak, since my very voice seemed to set this person off. 

I have intentionally left out any descriptive information about our guest. I fear that reading this might incite a heart attack or stroke. This does seem odd after this person's assertion that an individual is essentially powerless. I certainly did not feel powerless in our guest's company but I did feel powerless in evoking any rational explanation for this sudden regression into enraged victim identity over a free lunch in the home of presumed friends. 

I cannot help but feel sympathy for those who are labelled "bad" on the basis of a simple accusation without due process. There is a rush to identify as victimized among a certain segment of the population today. I wonder if this is a way of avoiding the acceptance that they, not the world around them, are disordered in some way. Feeling that I have no control over anything would absolve me of all responsibility to do something about my circumstances. I say this with a measure of personal experience as a cancer survivor (not victim) and an AIDS survivor (not victim). I was not a victim to cancer because cancer was in my DNA. I was not a victim to AIDS because I contracted HIV, a cost of living in a human body, during an epidemic. My inability to fight HIV without drugs did not make me a victim. It simply made me aware that I was genetically incapable of fighting a virus. That was my natural physical weakness in the face of HIV and HPV, in the case of cancer.   

Paradoxically, those people whom I encounter who have embraced their horrible situations and dealt with them head-on are so much stronger than those who have been accustomed to an easy life for many decades with good health and good fortune. The latter group are more prone to fall to the victim mentality when confronted with difficulty, especially mental illness. They are more likely to get stuck in denial or take to substance abuse, or just strike out at whomever will put up with it. Perhaps this applies to our guest. I may never know. All I do know is that my most sincere attempt to get to know was greeted with hysteria and rage. And, I also know that it was not my responsibility to fix it for my guest or anyone else.