Saturday Stories
November 18, 2017
I'm forever grateful to the writers who have touched my
life. There are books, such as Trevanian's Shibumi and Richard
Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, that are now a part of me.
I find great inspiration in poetry,
like in Rudyard Kipling's "If" and Max Erhmann's
"Desiderata."
And then there is
"Invictus" by William Ernest
Henley which is special to me on a deeply personal level.
"Invictus" is also the
favorite poem of Nelson Mandela whom I admire for his moral courage.
I still remember where I was while
watching the live broadcast of Mandela's death over CNN.
I also remember thinking that it
was a privilege to be living in the age of great world leaders like him and
Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, Jose Ramos-Horta of East Timor, and our very own
Cory Aquino of the Philippines – whom Mandela held in great esteem.
I have such profound respect for
people like Nelson Mandela and Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. who
survived years of deep solitary confinement as political prisoners, Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn who survived the Gulag death camp in Siberia, Elie Wiesel and
Viktor Frankl who survived the Nazi Holocaust, and the many brave men and women
throughout history who survived "the bludgeonings of chance" with
their principles still intact, with their heads "bloody but unbowed."
They are the masters of their fate,
and they are the captains of their souls.
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