Perspective is Everything

I had lunch the other day with a woman I met a while back at a protest rally.  Her personal story is unlike anything you’ve ever imagined.  She was a political prisoner in a country with a brutally oppressive regime and tortured for the crime of refusing to comply with specific governmental directives.  That’s all I’ll say- it’s not my story to tell, and I want to be respectful of her right to share her story with people of her choosing, not mine or anyone else’s.

But I MUST tell you that she is my hero, not just for the obvious reasons of surviving torture, or refusing to reveal the names of her associates to her captors, or making it to Canada and starting a new life, but mostly because she has done all those things and remained a woman with an incredibly gentle and caring spirit.  Being invited to her home, being served a truly memorable meal, being waited on hand and foot was the most humbling experience of my life.  I sat across the table from her and tried to remember where I was and what I’d been doing during the years she was in prison on the other side of the world. I marvelled at the circuitous path her life had taken before intersecting with mine. I cringed inwardly when I thought of how loudly I’d wailed about my own perceived injustices when a woman of my generation... a woman who could have been me had I been born in her country instead of mine... had endured unspeakable injustice.

That she could care about anyone’s sickness or emotional pain or difficult circumstances defies logic.  That she would insist on preparing a plate for me to bring home to my daughter, when my daughter and I enjoy such bounty and good health and prosperity defies any understanding of generosity I’ve ever had.  That she could have a profession that requires her to care for others when every bone in her body must call out to the universe for someone to care for her defies any definition of compassion I’ve come across.  She is a walking miracle, an embodiment of everything that is good and pure and noble in any religion,  a supernatural other-worldly incarnation of every good spirit that ever was.

Everybody needs someone like this in their lives, someone who catapults them out of their own little corner of the world and unknowingly reminds them that their own  challenges in life (i.e. a broken marriage) are survivable, and in the grand scheme of things ‘don’t amount to a hill of beans’.