Post Secret Sunday: Surviving

It's a strange thing about surviving: guilt. It doesn't matter if you're a survivor of genocide, war, conflict, rape, natural disaster, cancer...it's going to be there. Guilt. Why did I survive when so many did not? Why did I not fight back? Why me, not them?


Sometimes surviving can be ugly. There are nightmares you can't quite wake up from, and scars that time can't quite heal. There's anger and rage, and a palpable grief. There's a loss that can never be replaced. You can never go back, never be the same. Sometimes you walk through pathways littered with stolen innocence, broken dreams and taunting vestige of what should be. 


Whether we persevere or merely endure as survivors, the most important thing to remember is that we are still here, and there is a reason for it. The narrative of our lives have meaning, and by examining our stories and listening to our own voices, we empower ourselves to give a purpose to our lives. 


We are still here. Our presence means we've won.

365/30 Lists: October, Day 18

Favourite Sayings or Quotes:

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"We must never permit the voice of humanity within us to be silenced. It is Man's sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a Man." 

(Albert Schweitzer)

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"I have an idea that some men are born out of their due place. Accident has cast them amid certain surroundings, but they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not. They are strangers in their birthplace, and the leafy lanes they have known from childhood or the populous streets in which they have played, remain but a place of passage. They may spend their whole lives aliens among their kindred and remain aloof among the only scenes they have ever known. Perhaps it is this sense of strangeness that sends men far and wide in the search for something permanent, to which they may attach themselves. Perhaps some deep-rooted atavism urges the wanderer back to lands which his ancestors left in the dim beginnings of history. Sometimes a man hits upon a place to wchich he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest." 

(W. Somerset Maugham)

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“When I say, “I love you,” it’s not because I want you or because I can’t have you. It has nothing to do with me. I love what you are, what you do, how you try. I’ve seen your kindness and your strength. I’ve seen the best and the worst of you. And I understand with perfect clarity exactly what you are.” 

(Spike, BtVS)

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief…and unspeakable love.”

 (AmerIndian Proverb)

 

365/30 Lists: October, Day 10

Favourite Films:

365/30 Lists: October, Day 2

Who would you want to be stuck in a lift with?

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1. Prince Hector of Troy, from the "Iliad," one of the most badass warriors in antiquity.

2.  Paulo Freire and Maxine Greene, educators.

3. Viktor Frankl, writer.

4.  Albert Schweitzer, theologian and philosopher.

5. Mevlana Rumi, Sufist.

6.  Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer.

7. Maria Callas, opera diva who sang the most heartbreaking rendition of "In Questa Reggia," an aria from Puccini's "Turandot."

8. My da, because it was from him I discovered the magic of the seven people above. 

Yes, it'd have to be a huge lift!