Invictus

INVICTUS
English poet William Ernest Henley (1849–1903)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

To this day one of the most painful, yet most powerful memories I have is our trip to Robben Island.
(Afrikaans Robbeneiland)
As the bus tour of the island ended we stopped in front of the prison.
It was time to tour the prison itself.
There was no way I was to go in.
I don't know where all of the emotions came from.
It was unexpected and landed like a punch in the stomach.
I was physically sick to my stomach and in tears.
If Dan wouldn't have been with me I don't really know that I would have gone in.

Looking back, I feel like a wimp for being so emotional about the whole thing, yet here I was, sitting in a freezing cold movie theater, reliving it all again as Matt Damon and the team head off to the island.
I remembered the dock very well and didn't know if I could make the trip again.
I gasped, and said out loud, "oh no, they are going to Robben Island".
To this, my two oldest children just looked at me with that, shhh, we are in a movie look.

Morgan Freeman, who I have loved since the days of watching "The Electric Company" at Horace Man Elementary school with my best, and only friend Maxine, who I secretly envied because of her ability to clean our pink pencil erasers with the oil from her black scalp, was now portraying President Nelson Mandela. His words, "than we will be exactly what they thought we would be" still ring in my head.

As they toured the cell that Mandela lived in for so many years, I thought about the words to Invictus.
He had now taken the words of another to move "beyond this place of wrath and tears" knowing full well that there "looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid because he made the choice to embrace his own personal ability to change and forgive by putting into action these words....
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Before I went to the movie I had to Google Invictus to see what it was.
I was clueless.
As I finished reading these powerful words, I feared that some would miss the bigger message and get caught up on the words, "I am the captain of my soul", taking it literally, rather than thinking about the fact that before Mandela took one step off the island he would have to make a choice. I am guessing he made it long before he took the ferry boat back to the bay and long before the elections had been held.
He had many years to think about, and make personal choices.

I so wanted the world to "get it".
If they missed this point, what about apartheid?
Could there really be people who didn't know about apartheid?
I'm sure.
What about the people who don't think it is (was) real or better yet what about the people who didn't have a problem with it.

I have to believe that the lessons learned are each one of us on a personal level.
For some the light will just be coming on and for others it will be life changing as it was for me that day on Robben Island.

This I do know.
Now that we know, we can never not do something about what we know to be true.