I know my own writing tends to be pretty far on the uplifting/hopeful side and I'm generally a cheerful person when I'm not being crushed by some apocalyptic calamity... but in terms of how I think life works, I think King is right.
It's not that the worst will happen. For any given person, probably it won't. But it always can. And there's at least a 50% chance that it had absolutely nothing to do with you. You just happened to be walking by exactly the wrong part of the road at the exact moment some bad driver got distracted by his dog.
IMO, this is a good worldview to have if you're going to do grief and trauma counseling. Because while the unfairness and randomness of life is an incredibly hard thing to grapple with, what absolutely destroys people is believing that there is a reason and that the reason was something they did. (In fact, if you can get people past the "It's all my fault" stage, most of them will grapple with "there's no reason, shit just happens" for a while, then find some sort of kinder, more livable reason like "dude should have been banned from driving, laws should be stricter" or "It taught me that I can survive anything," etc.)
no subject
I know my own writing tends to be pretty far on the uplifting/hopeful side and I'm generally a cheerful person when I'm not being crushed by some apocalyptic calamity... but in terms of how I think life works, I think King is right.
It's not that the worst will happen. For any given person, probably it won't. But it always can. And there's at least a 50% chance that it had absolutely nothing to do with you. You just happened to be walking by exactly the wrong part of the road at the exact moment some bad driver got distracted by his dog.
IMO, this is a good worldview to have if you're going to do grief and trauma counseling. Because while the unfairness and randomness of life is an incredibly hard thing to grapple with, what absolutely destroys people is believing that there is a reason and that the reason was something they did. (In fact, if you can get people past the "It's all my fault" stage, most of them will grapple with "there's no reason, shit just happens" for a while, then find some sort of kinder, more livable reason like "dude should have been banned from driving, laws should be stricter" or "It taught me that I can survive anything," etc.)