Dealing with Difficulties

 

"Hey, Four Eyes!"

 

When I was a kid, I heard this all the time. I am legally blind, and so, even as a kid, I wore real thick glasses. This sort of teasing was common for me. I couldn't play in sports because of my eyes, and so I became sort of a nerd, which didn't help me make friends, either. I grew up as a shy, overweight, nearsighted, unpopular kid. I'm not complaining, though, I'm just telling you what it was like for me.

 

Lots of people ask me how I got through it, how I managed to stay cheerful and not to become bitter about the whole thing. There are ways to make it work for you, whatever your problems are, and whatever makes you "different" from the rest of the world. How? Well, keep reading, and I'll tell you how I did it.

 

Know Your Friends. I mean your real friends, the people you can go to when you are really feeling down. Find out who is willing to back you up in times of trouble. There probably won't be a lot of them, but you don't need that many. I've found that one true friend is worth a hundred so-called friends who aren't willing to help you out of a jam. Of course, in order to have a friend, you need to be a friend, and so you should always take care to treat your friends with respect.

 

Don't Ignore Them. My parents always used to tell me to ignore the kids who picked on me. The only problem is this never worked. I tried to ignore them, but it didn't make them go away. See, you can't really ignore them, because they're there, and they will make themselves noticed. If you pretend to ignore them, they will go out of their way to make themselves even worse. I can already hear somebody asking: so, if we don't ignore them, what do we do?

 

Deal With Them. This doesn't mean turn around and sock them in the nose! That's not what I'm talking about. Ignoring them won't work. Fighting will get you into trouble, and doesn't solve much anyway. What you have to do is to let them know, or at least make them believe, that what makes you "different", doesn't bother you. This is the key to it all: If your handicap, or your appearance, or whatever, doesn't bother you, then their teasing can't bother you either. As an example, a long time ago, I came to accept my eye problem. It wasn't my fault, and there was nothing I could do about it, so, I learned to live with it. Once my eye problem no longer bothered me, neither did their teasing.

 

Accept It. Your condition, I mean. Whatever it is they tease you about. I mean, you can't change it, right? You're going to have to put up with it for the rest of your life. Now, you can choose to be miserable all of your life, or you can accept that you are the way you are. Now, if you can change your condition, then go ahead and do it. For instance, if you know you're overweight, and it's not some medical problem, then try to lose weight. Yes, I know it's difficult, for this, and other problems, but if you really want it, you can do it. The whole thing is really all up to you. You can grumble and complain about those other kids teasing you, but does that ever make them stop? It never did when I was a kid. See, kids who tease like that, all they want is for you to feel bad, so that they can feel better about themselves. So, if you don't feel bad about yourself, then they don't have anything to work with.

 

Have a Sense of Humor. As I said, my eye problem is very severe, and I wore very thick glasses when I was young. I still do, as a matter of fact. Lots of the other kids used to make fun of my glasses, and they'd make vicious jokes about my sight. Usually, when I'd hear one of these jokes, I would come back with a better one of my own- about me! "Hey, I'm legally blind. You know what that means? It means I have a legal excuse to walk into walls!" In other words, I'd poke fun at myself. I believe that if you can laugh at yourself, it makes life a lot easier. Now, I suppose some psychologist will tell you that it's bad to put yourself down, and I agree, but that's not what I was doing. I'm not putting myself down at all. I've just come to accept that there's nothing I can do to change my eye condition, and so I deal with it. I put my nose right into books to read them, my computer screen is about 6" from my face, I do lots of things in what appear to be odd ways. But, you know, I still manage to do most of the things everyone else does. I'm not a complete waste of space, no matter what some people wanted me to believe. And neither are you. Remember, God Makes No Junk. I can still lead a productive life, and so can you, whatever your difficulties may be.

 

Make Lemonade. There's an old saying that I heard over and over as I grew up: "When Life Hands you a Lemon, Make Lemonade." In other words, take whatever you're given, and do the very best you possibly can with it. I can't see well, but I can write, and I know a lot about computers, and I love music. And, even in my condition, I can still do martial arts. You see, if you're always going through life looking for why you can't do something, you'll never get anything done. I learned there is almost nothing I can't achieve, if I'm willing to try hard enough. And so can you. You should feel good about yourself, regardless of what might be "wrong" or "missing" or "defective". All those words that people like to use when they talk about others who just have to try a little harder. And when you do try, and you succeed, you'll know the best feeling you've ever had. And then those guys who picked on you all those years, well, they won't really be important, after all.

 

The Serenity Prayer:

 

"God, grant me the Strength to Change the things I can, The Serenity to Accept the things I can't, and the Wisdom to know the difference."