Congrats on Your Struggle

This week Ted Cruz recently congratulated a woman on her struggle with Multiple Sclerosis. My first reaction was “That’s a weird choice of words…”,  and the more I thought about it the more I started to think the congrats wasn’t too far off. We should get this out of the way now, I don’t agree with Ted Cruz on many things. Especially cutting programs like Medicare and Medicaid but let’s save that for another post.

Was Ted Cruz right to congratulate that woman on her struggle with MS? Maybe…not like a robot alien who just learned English though.

Ted Cruz Congratulates woman with MS

I often tell people my MS has been an amazing experience. The perspective gained is worth everything I have lost. My struggle with MS has been overwhelmingly positive despite the hardships. Everything out of Ted’s mouth is awkward, maybe he has been reading a lot about Nietzsche and the Philosophy of the struggle.

“To those human beings who are of any concern to me I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill-treatment, indignities—I wish that they should not remain unfamiliar with profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, the wretchedness of the vanquished: I have no pity for them, because I wish them the only thing that can prove today whether one is worth anything or not—that one endures.”

Or simply

“That which does not kill us, makes us stronger”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

I guess what I’m trying to get at is, I would rather be congratulated for my struggle than told “I’m so sorry…”. You didn’t do anything to me, why are you sorry? The funny part is, I get way more people telling me sorry. It seems to be much more of a societal norm. Next time you want to apologize for someone’s disease or disability, just don’t. For that matter don’t congratulate them either. We don’t need value judgments on our struggles, we just need understanding.

It’s more telling that the biggest news about this gaffe wasn’t his thoughts on Medicare and Medicaid but how he addressed her struggle. There are 14 million people on disability under the age of 65, we want to know how your going to make medicare better?