Topic: coping
When such luxuries as freedom and voice are taken, the number of choices a person has are seriously limited. The focus needs to turn toward taking stock of what remains, especially the things nobody can take away. Once the re-assessment of resources and needs has taken place, how one decides to invest time and energy is up for evaluation. At least, this is the process for the healthiest people.
There is an alternative. Choosing it leads to depression, despondency, and more limitations. The alternative being to focus, instead, on what one has lost--obsessing endlessly, becoming more and more furious, robbing one's self of the precious thing we call life, even as life in big chunks passes the victim by.
I've read several of the letters to Clara Breed, the young librarian who chose to reach out to Japanese-Americans who were unfairly sent to internment camps. It seems that the young people have succeeded in forming a support group. They talk about their inconveniences--being moved frequently, living in uncertainty and crowded conditions, not being able to stay as clean as they wish to do (yet pouring much of their energy into doing so), and not being able to get tasty food. Oh, how they miss sugar! Yet you can almost hear them giggling and chattering, as they appreciate the small things and figure out how to cope.
As they prioritize their resources, most of which are dwindling, they are most grateful for Ms. Breed's gifts that consist mostly of books. Books! A sign of wealth that cannot be easily taken from us today, no matter what the state of lesser riches like the stock market or our personal bank accounts.
Ms. Breed, the librarian, knew this. Her gift to those who had lost their freedom, even in this "land of the free" is a strong reminder for all of us today, no matter what we have suffered.
