I want to tell you about a beautiful little boy named Martin. He was the apple of his parent’s eyes. He was their first born. And he was beautiful. With a smile that went from ear to ear. Then one day without warning Martin died. At home; surrounded by his mother, his grandmother, the family doctor, the fire department, the police and the ambulance crew. His father had tried, vainly, to get home. Martin was two and a half.
I was born two years later. My mother taught me early on that it is the small hurts that prepare us for the truly big ones-not that she ever thought that something like that would happen to me. I also learned from her that victim-hood is a choice. I wrote about this in my book Back to the Ethic: Reclaiming Western Values.