No matter how bad you think your situation is, it’s probably not as bad as most Haitians’ situation yesterday. And that’s on top of a mess of other problems; a week ago, before anyone was even thinking of earthquakes, Haiti was the poorest country in the western hemisphere. But even the most miserable person in Haiti need not consider him or herself defeated — not even death is necessarily defeat.
Toil and struggle is the norm, not the exception. Pain and suffering are normal. Failure and destruction is normal. What matters is not whether your struggle ultimately results in something good (a house in the suburbs and a surgically enhanced wife, right?). What matters is whether you keep fighting or you give up.
Giving up is by no means something unwelcome to the sufferer. On the contrary, to allow circumstances to overcome you, to quit swimming and surrender yourself to the currents, is perhaps the most delicious poison on the planet. The urge to surrender creeps into the back of your mind, and once you acknowledge it as a viable option it’s already won. Surrender is compelling– it’s easy and responsibility is difficult.
But continuing the struggle in spite of terrible circumstances, even the nightmarish horror of an earthquake’s aftermath, is the ultimate expression of life’s resiliency, and marks anyone who expresses such as a true hero.
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 nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but 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 with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.