A Positive Story
When I first broke my back I thought I was dreaming. Only about 3 days later did I realize that what had happened was real. At that point, I started to question why this had happened to me. I began to blame the people around me, I was angry. I didn’t know someone’s life could change forever just by going off a simple ski jump. I felt people should have warned me against it. As I began to sort out the accident and its meaning I came to a very powerful conclusion. To articulate the transformation of my beliefs I will use the Buddhist parable of the two arrows. The teaching is that there are two arrows that hit us in any negative situation. The first is part of life but the second is optional. The first arrow in my case was the accident. The second arrow was anger, blame, and the story I told myself. Unknowingly I was making my situation worse by trying to blame others and decide why this had happened to me. Now I understand that we do not have to tell ourselves negative st...