Pasted from comments on "Reflections on Loss, Leadership"
Dan said...
It's an unbearably geeky reference, but I've always like the song "Hero" from the SpiderMan soundtrack.
"Some say a hero will save usI'm not going to stand here and wait"
It's also been said "be the change you want to see in the world"
There are many things we cannot change, cannot impact... but MANY things that we can
February 4, 2008 11:33 AM
Pema said...
The most pressing being the awareness that we each are our own saviors. However it is that we remember--divinely or politically--that WE ARE NOT LOST when plans go radically awry, when hope goes peekid, this is the most important impact we make.
I waited till I was 35 for my dad to save me, help me, see me as someone who needed his parental shepherding. Going it alone during a debilitating health condition, I was upset and grasping at anything that could be a factor in my illness, emotional, physical, psychic. When I said to a health practitioner, "What's it going to take for my dad to notice that I need him? What has to happen to me?"
The air sucked out of the room and she looked at me sharply. "Bite your tongue," she said. "You need to take care of yourself, and believe that YOU are your protector, no one else."
She was saying what I am saying now. We can place hope in people and things outside ourselves--leaders and lovers and politicians--but it is only that little flame in us that is going to keep us alive and thriving when shit hits the fan.
February 5, 2008 1:16 PM
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thanks for re-posting the comments. I might not have thought to check to see if you had commented on my comment.
ReplyDeleteIt's true, of course. As much as we need each other, we also need to know that ultimately we are responsible for ourselves, and can't truly depend on anyone else. Not to say that people won't be there for us, because they will be. But yeah, we are our own saviors.
It's a difficult rallying cry for strength and responsibility, but an essential one.