Friday, October 16, 2015


DEAL WITH IT

 

Sometimes, there are situations facing people that seem insurmountable regardless of one’s age.  When they occur, stress builds up and they are perceived as existing forever. The fact of the matter is with time they eventually do pass.  How we handle a situation can be managed with minimizing stress.  It takes a certain amount of personal awareness to understand and deal with it.  We need to step back and recognize that we have a choice as to how we react to what we are facing.  True, that’s not easy but we do have that capacity to summon the process of reasoning. 

Maybe some of us can remember our English class in high school when we read and even memorized “Invictus” (Latin for “unconquered”), a short Victorian poem by the English poet William Ernest Henley (1849-1903).
 
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced or cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged the punishments the scroll
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul. 

Interestingly enough, in 1875 one of Henley’s legs was amputated due to complications from tuberculosis.  He was due to have the other removed; but, fortunately another surgeon saved the other leg.  He was inspired to write this poetry while recovering and also with recollections of an impoverished childhood.   His poem has been immortalized by Winston Churchill’s speech to the House of Commons on September 9, 1941 by paraphrasing the last two lines of the poem, “We are still the masters of our fate.  We are still the captain of our souls.”  Nelson Mandela, while in prison, recited the poem to other prisoners and was empowered by its message of self-mastery.

 We have the courage and ability to address stressful situations in a rational manner to endure what may appear to be unending, perpetual or everlasting.

 

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