Thursday, December 10, 2009

Don't Give Up

Even the greatest of heroes had to fight constantly against the commonest temptation of giving it all up. It comes too often, it nags upon our weak frame of human, the sense of mediocrity exacting and exhilarating... it is not worth the pain. Why dare where no one ventures? Why be different from the others. Yet somewhere deep inside us, we yearn for something higher, we are aware that we are meant for something higher than what is just easy, we feel that we are called to make a difference.


"L'Homme se decouvre quand il se mesure avec l'obstacle" That is a phrase that gives a focus in Saint-Exupery's philosophical novel, Terre des Hommes. The worth of a human person is evident before adversity, trying times come with every breath we take, moments one fancies the simple exercise, natural as it were, of breathing comparable to a tedious monotony that marks our daily life. It could be tiring sometimes doing the same old repeated gestures that accompany our being human. One of the greatest pain of the human being is that of just being human, of living his /her destiny, of receiving his/her call in this vulnerable mortal body.

When I came home from work I was weaned like a child, every energy ebbing out. All i wanted to do was lie down and sleep. I could think of nothing, hope for nothing. The only resolved course that stirred my being was that of just quitting.

Listless moments could be so dreadful.

I fancied there are great souls that have known such moments and such also could be moments of great creativity and meaningful work because such a work flows from the deep essential source of him/her, from his/her vulnerable fragility, from that part of him that is most sacred, that part that defines him/her, that part that is most delicate and short-lived: his /her suffering, his/her yearning for light. As I write this, the celebrated words of a poet come to my mind, I can't say who he is, but I read this a long time ago: "Somtimes I am up, sometimes I am down, sometimes I am almost to the grown." Success could be a great temptation that it clouds our vision of the reality of who we are. We swing up with its wave, the fall may be deafening and catastrophic. But I have to learn the deep truth that louring hours sharpen our vision... pain makes us grow, it awakens the human in us.

I continue the draft of another chapter... my mind in the maze. At the moment I was almost giving it up, when I was almost abandoning it and returning to the shadowy gloom of my lethargy, I heard the lyrics of the song of Josh Gobran, "Don't Give Up" reaching me like some prophecy... "Don't give up, because you are loved". So like a stoic I hung unto them. I know I can't just give up because I have known love, because I know love, because I will always know love. That love, even though imperfect as it maybe, offered freely by another human becomes a seed that needs to be nourished, catered for and brought to fruition. Its growth may be painful. Its seasons lour, but it is always there, calling us to achieve things for a generation that we shall never know. It is always there drawing us like an invisible thread to humanity. I won't give up, as long as there is life flowing through my veins, as long as there is that memory of those unknown faces that wait to hear a word of comfort, I won't give up. I wont give up. I wont just give up, because love is its own creation... It never dies! And I am loved.

2 comments:

Pasky said...

Hi Rom, i have just visited your blog and started to read "Don't Give Up". It is speaking to me sooooo loudly, it seems you wrote it for me. You don't know what good it has done reading it. I needed such words badly. thanks again. Pasky

ROMUALD DZEMO said...

Hahaha. I feel so happy that things written in an offhand way could resonate in the hearts of others. Thanks a lot again Pasky. Keep the world rocking.

welcome to the WORLD OF HAVEN VALLEY

I am not a cut different from the ordinary human who walks the street. But in my journey, I strive to understand the music that surges from the wide worlds within every individual, that which makes him/her that fragile and sacred at the same time. I have found myself sometimes looking at someone farting with thumps-up as though goading him on to sanity. Seemingly meaningless things have been things that have communicated sense to me especially during louring hours. That is what this journal is. I offer these thoughts to the world with wonted pleasure and gratitude to all that awakens the human in me.

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