Undaunted

Bana Alabed in Aleppo

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that Bana Alabed and her family might be evacuated from Aleppo. The bad news is that the rest of the innocents trapped in the hell of Aleppo might not be. In fact, innocents are now being murdered by Syrian government forces in execution-style shootings. As the UN puts it, the situation in Aleppo has become a "complete meltdown of humanity."

As I drink my organic, fair-trade coffee and put maple cream on my breakfast wrap, I melt down in my own way about the vast chasm between my life and the hell in Aleppo. James and I try to be globally conscious in everything we do, and we don't invest much in material comforts, but we're wealthy compared to our neighbors in Aleppo. We have food, water, electricity, an intact house with central heating, and—most of all—safety. My life has been so fortunate that I can't even imagine what it's like to have bombs raining down on my head, no food, family and friends killed in front of me. How do people survive that psychologically and spiritually, if they're fortunate enough to survive physically?

I wonder how refugees can resettle in a totally foreign land and manage to function. The human spirit is extremely resilient—it has to be or many of us would never make it through this life of hardship, trauma, and constant loss, no matter what your standard of living is. I've managed to keep going through childhood abuse, chronic severe depression, poverty and near homelessness caused by depression and PTSD preventing me from holding down a full-time job, and the traumatic losses of my mother and father who both died from strokes in their 70s. There have been many times I've come close to committing suicide, but I kept going through the ultimate despair. I have friends who currently persevere despite a traumatically ugly divorce and discovering pedophilia in their own family. How can they keep doing their jobs, and doing them well? How can they keep from giving up, from losing faith, under the pressure? My mind reels in the face of it.  

It should fill me with hope to see how well we can keep doing this thing called Life through almost any misery. My own fortitude should make me confident that humans can make it, survive the worst case scenarios, thrive in the throes of massive pain. But it still stuns me when I see others confronting evil with hope. 

Teaching English to refugees will be great training for me in the perseverance of the human spirit. As Helen Keller writes in Out of the Dark,

By learning the sufferings and burdens of men [sic], I became aware as never before of the life-power that has survived the forces of darkness—the power which, though never completely victorious, is continuously conquering. The very fact that we are still here carrying on the contest against the hosts of annihilation proves that on the whole the battle has gone for humanity. The world’s great heart has proved equal to the prodigious undertaking which God set it. Rebuffed, but always persevering; self-reproached, but ever regaining faith; undaunted, tenacious, the heart of man [sic] labors towards immeasurably distant goals. Discouraged not by difficulties without, or the anguish of ages within, the heart listens to a secret voice that whispers: “Be not dismayed; in the future lies the Promised Land.”

For a list of organizations providing help to the people of Aleppo, please see Syria in crisis: How you can help (SBS News, 13 Dec 2016).