picture in my mind

I actually had to pause so I can post it here,

because it's just so damn good.

Everybody is a strange mixture of victim and victimizer. Lots of terrible things happen to people that aren't justifiable in some sense; illness strikes people randomly; where you're thrown into existence as a consequence of your birth; there's going to be times in your life where things twist in a manner that's unfair to you. But that goes along with the unequally distributed privileges as well. That's the arbitrary nature of existence. But you can't allow those sorts of things to define you, because it's not that useful strategically.

When you're playing a card game, you're dealt a hand of cards; 
well, what do you do? You play the hand the best you can.

Why? Because all the hands are equal? No! Because you don't have a better strategy than playing the hand that you're dealt the best you can. And that doesn't even mean it'll be a winning strategy. Because people don't always win; sometimes we lose, sometimes we lose painfully, sometimes we lose painfully and unjustly. That's not the point. The point is you don't have a better strategy. And neither does anyone else.

If you start to regard yourself as a hapless victim, or even worse, an unfairly victimised victim, well then things go very badly sideways for you, it's not a good strategy. You end up resentful, you end up angry, you end up vengeful, you end up hostile, and that's just the beginning. Things can get far more out of hand than that.

It's better to take responsibility for the hand that you've been dealt.


Everything Dr Peterson says in this resonates with me, especially with respect to new ideas and thoughts that I've pondered over the past year; he basically summed up for me, all of East of Eden, and why it struck me so deeply. That whole thing up there; that's Cal's story! (and each of our stories too) Facing your own capacity for evil and struggling with the hurt and injustice one suffers in life, as a necessity toward real good. He mentions Harry Potter too, haha. I cried at multiple points of this talk.

This man is here to stay on my list of admirable people.
I am floored by how intelligent he is,
and how real and honest he is about the search for truth and meaning.