Courage is grace under pressure – Ernest Hemingway
Gabrielle Giffords doesn’t know me. Nor do the 13 other citizens wounded along with Giffords by Jared Lee Loughner in Tucson, Arizona. The same goes for the dozens and dozens of Norwegians shot and wounded by mass killer Anders Behring Breivik in his July 2011 rampage in downtown Oslo and Utoya Island. And yet I stand all amazed at the grace that these everyday heroes have exhibited under pressure.
Hemingway was right. True courage is to be graceful under pressure. True courage means you don’t become bitter and angry when your life is turned upside down.
Maybe your life has been turned upside down by a sickness or a disability or a sick or disabled spouse or child. Maybe you’ve been betrayed by a wayward spouse or child (or the perverted molester or brazen rapist). Or worse, your world is shattered when your child or loved one vanishes or is taken by Death.
Of course there’s the ultimate pressure of having someone shoot you. Ask anyone in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam or any other war zone. Ask anyone in any shootout. You’re left with horrible wounds and recurring flashbacks while spending years with surgeons and therapists. Nothing and I mean nothing is ever the same again.
And so this is why I especially admire women who are seriously injured like U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. I greatly admire women who care for a sick or disabled spouse or child or family member. They all have courage and they have to have it day by day and even hour by hour to survive and have a measure of joy and peace without anger or bitterness.
You know who you are. Or you know someone who’s under pressure but acting gracefully. One of my dearest friends recently got a diagnosis of ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) or “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”. And yet there’s been no complaining or railing about cruel fate. The same goes with several mothers whom I know. They care or cared for their severely disabled children.
Take my friend Ana – after being abandoned by her husband Ana forced Cuba’s Castro dictatorship to let her and the boy come to the USA for treatment. She worked two jobs and cared for her son till he went back to that home where no illness or travails bother him.
I write crime novels and I constantly meet and find courageous women while doing background research for my books. One such remarkable woman is Desiree Young. She’s the mother of 7-year-old Kyron Horman who vanished from his school in broad daylight while in his stepmother’s custody. No matter what you think about Desiree’s choices leading up to the kidnaping she does not deserve the torture of a missing child. Despite her pain and her guilty conscience (in not bringing Kyron to live with her) she works hard at keeping Kyron’s case before the public much like Kyron’s father.
So this is my tribute to those who are “heavy laden” by life’s painful burdens. Please share it with them. I know from my own painful experience that the bright day will always follow the night of affliction.