Two Daughters

During yesterday's pop culture class, we were watching a film on how the CIA launched a series of terrorist attacks on Chile during the 1970s. One comment by a Chilean resonated with my senses quite a bit; he says that 'Hope has two daughters, Anger and Courage. Anguish because of the present, and courage to change the future'. It might sound tacky to some, but I cannot agree with him more.

Just today, I was watching another documentary on BBC which provided a pretty lucid journalistic account of the situation in Palestine. In one particular scene, it focused on an EU diplomat who visited a hospital in Palestine to see what sort of medical aid EU can provide. The Palestine doctors were working for free, and they were running out of drugs and other medical supplies. After showing the EU diplomat beds after beds of Palestinians patients, the EU diplomat gave a verdict that they will provide petrol for the running of the hospital electricity. As the journalist (I assume he is a British) asked the Palestine doctor how he feels about the EU visit, he gave a matter-of-fact reply: "I think they are like you, they are only interested on what is happening". After a momentary pause, the journalist asked him if the EU diplomat has made any differences, he replied: "no, i think there is no difference between the two of you". Hmmm... I felt that hope, anguish and courage were enmeshed together all at once in that Palestinian doctor.

The above photo was taken in Berlin, during my slightly aimless sojourn in Europe. The walls were constructed as a way to remind the Germans of world war 2. There was no information board to suggest what those walls represent; it was intentionally designed for an open interpretation of what those walls mean for the viewer. A common interpretation was the sense of lost and fear that the Jews felt as they walked through the alleys of Auschwitz.

Sometimes, when I sit back and think for a while, this world really doesn't quite give a lot of hope, in a macro and a micro sense. It is not the Creator's fault of course. We have an incredible ability to self-destruct. I can only be an observor of macro hopelessness in the Mideast and other crazy parts of the world. And I can only be an informed observor to the extent that the global media is willing to report them in an objective manner. For me, it takes a lot of anguish and courage just to maneuver hope against hopelessness in the micro things of life. War - the direct embodiment of anger and courage at a mass level - is perhaps a necessary condition to fight against hopelessness in the macro things of this world.