Tag: inspiration

Long Walk to Freedom

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Famous Activists, Global Events, Human Rights, True Stories12 Comments

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“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite…

Man’s goodness is a flame that can be hidden but never explained.”

 (From Long Walk to Freedom, 1995)

For many years, I have kept a copy of Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom on my bedside table.  I don’t keep it there because I am in the process of reading it (I have read it twice), but because I keep the words of this great human rights hero in my heart.   I like waking up in the morning and knowing that it  is there.   Sometimes I just lay there and look at the title on the binding for a few seconds.  It helps me remember the good in this world.

Long Walk to Freedom was published in 1995, just a few years after Nelson Mandela was released from his nearly three decades of imprisonment on Robben Island and Pollsmoor Prison for leading the ANC.    I was in law school at the time.  I think that when  I first read it, I was especially looking for information from his early years about how and why he became a human rights warrior.  (Yes, Nelson Mandela was a lawyer, too.)   I love that as a child, he was called  “Rolihlahla” , which means “pulling the branch of a tree ” (i.e. “troublemaker”).

Here are a few of the things that he wrote in the book that rang true for me.

“I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There was no particular day on which I said, Henceforth I will devote myself to the liberation of my people; instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could not do otherwise.”

and

“I have never cared very much for personal prizes. A person does not become a freedom fighter in the hope of winning awards.”

and

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.”

Tonight, when I heard the news that Nelson Mandela had died, I was not surprised.   Nelson Mandela was 95 years old and had been ill for a long time.  His human body had become a painful prison from which his soul deserved freedom.    I remembered that he had written about freedom in his autobiography.  I don’t know which parts of  Long Walk to Freedom were written clandestinely on Robben Island and which were written after his release, but long-term detention must have had an impact on his views of freedom.  When Nelson Mandela talked about freedom, it was not limited to his own person.  Rather, for Nelson Mandela, freedom was inextricably linked to the freedom of other human beings.

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

and

“Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.”

Freedom from imprisonment was not the end of the story for Nelson Mandela.  It was only the beginning of his work in leading South Africa towards a new, post-apartheid era.  What he says about leadership  in Long Walk to Freedom is also instructive.

“A leader. . .is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”

and

“A Nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it’s lowest ones”

When Nelson Mandela wrote his autobiography, he still had many years left in his long life and many miles yet to walk.

“I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.”

Your long walk is ended now and the world is a better place because of it.    Rest well, Rolihlahla!  I will keep your words in my heart and –  on my bedside table.

  While I understand that a movie based on the autobiography has just been released, I hope that others will take the time to read Long Walk to Freedom.   Nothing can inspire admiration of this great human rights leader than the words written by Nelson Mandela himself.

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The Hue of You: Choose a Job You Love

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Human Rights, Photography, Travel, Weekly Challenges20 Comments
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Open family law case files at the Legal and Human Rights Centre in
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

I’m sharing this photo of hundreds of open family law case files at  at the Legal and Human Rights Centre in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in response to the Weekly Photo Challenge: The Hue of You.  Two LHRC attorneys are responsible for all of these open cases.

The work of a human rights warrior can be hard, but it is definitely ALWAYS interesting – and colorful!

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

― Confucius

Chronicles of a Bike Commuter

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Best of The Human Rights Warrior, Memoir, True Stories11 Comments

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I’ve been a bike commuter on and off for twenty years.   But it wasn’t until I began posting about it on Facebook recently that I began to realize that maybe biking is more for me than just transportation to and from work.  I know that bike commuting impacts my daily  life (I’m definitely grumpier when I have to drive), but is it possible that the simple act of riding a bike has also influenced me in other ways?

I started bike commuting back when I was in graduate school in the Boston area, motivated partly by the fact that I had no money and partly because driving, parking and everything associated with cars is a PAIN in that city.  I biked to law school a lot, but I took a break during the long years of managing babies and daycare pick-up for young children.  Although I don’t consider myself a serious cyclist, I have returned to steady bike commuting now that my children are older.

I have to admit that, living in Minneapolis – America’s most bike-friendly city,  I have it easy as a bike commuter.  It is only a 4 mile commute to my office downtown, with most of the ride in a dedicated bike lane (thanks to the 2008 economic stimulus package for cities).  We even have a shower in our office building.  While I don’t ride in the ice and snow of the Minnesota winters, I do bike commute almost every day from late March until early December.

Everybody knows that there are obvious benefits to bike commuting.   Riding your bike to work increases your physical activity,  thus helping you drop pounds, reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke, improves your mental health, etc etc.    There is an environmental benefit as well in terms of reduced emissions.  While I can’t do anything about my carbon footprint when I travel internationally, I can do this one small thing when I am at home.  And, of course, there are economic benefits:

October 10, 2012:  The financials are in! By bike commuting for 5 months, I saved more than $700 in gas and parking. (There’s probably a way to calculate the calories burned, too but that’s too complicated for me.)

Upon reviewing and reflecting upon my Facebook posts, however, I think I can identify some other benefits of bike commuting that are a little more intangible.

I have learned to be a little more organized.  Bike commuting  require some planning.    I have a stash of work clothes in my office and a collection of shoes under my desk.  Shopping when you have to transport things in your bike panniers really forces  you to plan ahead. Many a time, I have felt like a Parisian, peddling home with a baguette in my bike pannier.  Other times I have kind of pushed the limits…

July 17, 2012: I’m getting to be an expert bike commuter. Tonight I rode home with two bottles of wine and a litterbox in my pannier.

I definitely notice a lot more about the world around me. I think it may be the combination of the need to watch out for cars and the time to reflect, but I have become a bike seat philosopher.

April 29, 2013: I saw some interesting things on the bike ride home from work tonight: old guy strolling cheerfully down the street in his boxers and fedora; lady going for a walk with her cat in a Baby Bjorn; guy singing at the top of his lungs while driving a black Cadillac convertible, MN license ISLAM4U; guy tossing hot sopapillas out of his apartment window to delighted passers-by on the sidewalk below; lady biking with her little-dog-Toto (whatever breed that is) in a Camelbak; and a lady in a motorized wheelchair racing a lady pushing a baby in a pram, both laughing hysterically.

I guess spring brings out the crazy in all of us!

October 15, 2013:  I’ve noticed that people in convertibles smile a lot more than people driving regular cars.

I feel more connected to my community.  You interact with people much more when you are on a bike than when you are in a car.

October 2, 2013:  On this gorgeous fall morning, the cop directing traffic near the Convention Center called out to me as I passed him, “Have a good ride, miss!”

October 3, 2013:   I am chronically late, always rushing to get to the place I was supposed to be 5 minutes ago. So I had to laugh at the guy who called out to me as I passed him on his bike, “Slow down there, girlie! You’re gonna get yourself a speeding ticket!”

There are certain characters along my bike route that have become familiar to me.  People that I once would have zipped by without noticing are now friendly faces.  There’s a tall homeless guy who wears a gray polarfleece jacket regardless of the weather.  I pass him walking near the Convention Center most mornings and he shouts a hello.  I can tell by his accent that he is from West Africa.  There’s a kid who goes to Whittier Elementary who I have ridden with several times for half a mile or so on his way to school.  He’s saving up to buy a day-pass to Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall of America.   There is an elderly Somali gentlemen who raises a hand to salute me every afternoon near the Horn Towers.  And then there is Gandalf in Boxer Shorts, a grizzled old guy with a long flowing beard who generally strolls down Blaisdell Avenue wearing nothing but boxer shorts and dress shoes.

May 23, 2013:  I spotted Gandalf in Boxer Shorts again on the bike commute home. Then, one block later, a new character – Smeagol, Tan and Extremely Cheerful!

Is it possible that bike commuting has made me into a more compassionate human being?

October 1, 2013:   This morning, I stopped and helped a kid who took a wrong turn and got lost while biking to school. So I was in Good Samaritan mode, see. On the ride home, I stopped to help an old man lying face down on the sidewalk. Imagine my surprise when it turned out he was just taking a little rest between sets of push-ups.

Nope, I guess not.

October 11, 2013: If I were a”Spiritual Healer” (which admittedly, I am not), I do not think I would choose to solicit customers by standing in front of the White Castle on Lake Street and darting out to the the bike lane when the light is red. Also, I would be a little less judgmental when the bikers refuse to take my “Spiritual Healer” card.  And I would definitely not say to them,  “Ohhh-kaaaay. Your loss!”

Of course, bike commuting is not all smiles and sunshine.

October 3, 2013:  On this misty morning, the whole city smells like wet dog.

October 7, 2013:  This morning, I rode over a banana peel in the road and almost fell off my bike. Much funnier in the cartoons than in real life.

October 8, 2013:  Strong winds on the ride home tonight. Once or twice, I was standing up and peddling as hard as I could but literally going nowhere. I felt like I was in the cyclone scene from the Wizard of Oz. (Cue the Wicked Witch of the West theme song!)

 

October 10, 2013: I was biking home from a lovely event on a perfect fall evening under a canopy of majestic elms, gloriously ablaze with color …   when a bird pooped on my shoulder.

 Stay tuned!  More Chronicles of a Bike Commuter to come!

October: Lake Harriet, Minneapolis, Minnesota
October: Lake Harriet, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Regrets

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Best of The Human Rights Warrior, Human Rights, Memoir, Parenting, True Stories16 Comments

A couple of days ago, my  daughter asked me, “Do you ever have regrets?”

She asked me this in the bathroom, as I was drying my hair.  No matter what I am doing, my two youngest kids seem to hover around me, fluttering like moths to a flame.  The lack of privacy – not to mention personal space – doesn’t really bother me anymore.  And often, as on this particular morning, it provides the opportunity to talk about whatever is bubbling to the surface of  their young minds.

I weighed my possible responses. My daughter just turned eight. What could a second-grader possibly know about regret?  In the end, I answered that, in general, my regrets were not about things that I had done but rather about things that I had NOT done.

“Do YOU have any regrets?” I asked.

After a pause, she admitted, “Sometimes I’m not so nice to some kids at school.”

“But recognizing that you aren’t always nice means that you can do something about it,” I pointed out.  “Right?”

She shrugged and wandered off with her American Girl doll.  Maybe the message would sink in.

But for me,  a question remained, left hanging in the humid, post-shower bathroom air.

What do you do when you have regrets but you know that there is not a thing in the world that you can do about them?

The truth is that my daughter’s question brought me back to a conversation that I had in a very different context.  Several years ago, I spent some time in the Buduburam Refugee Settlement in Ghana. I was with a team taking statements from Liberian refugees for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia.  It was almost exactly six years ago – May 2007 – and it was grueling, emotional work.  I interviewed more than 40 people that week and every single one of them  had suffered multiple layers of trauma and unimaginably tragic loss.  One after another, in family groups and as individuals, they sat before me in a small, cramped office.  Sometimes there was power for the ceiling  fan to move the hot, heavy air; sometimes there was not.  Each one of them was a survivor of horror, a testifier to the nightmare of war.  (I’ve written about some of them before in Talking To My Kids About Death.)

Even though they had left their homeland of Liberia, what they had experienced was still very much with them.  Even if they could push it down deep during the day, the terrors they witnessed would return to haunt their dreams.   Many people I interviewed told me of how the nightmares startled them awake at night, sweating and crying.  Many more told me of hearing others screaming in the night, neighbors who were trapped in their own PTSD- induced nightmares. There is no privacy in a refugee camp.

There was one woman who has always stayed with me.  She was middle-aged, calm and collected.  She told me her story in detail, almost scientifically exact.  Clearly, she had relived the events many times over.  She told me of her life before the war, the fighting and chaos that separated her from her husband and some of her children, the desperate weeks when she, her youngest children, and their neighbors hid in the bush, the treacherous journey to the border. The years – more than a decade- of limbo in this refugee camp.

At the end of any interview, I always ask, “Is there anything else you would like to tell me?”

This woman told me of that the only true regret that she had, the only regret of her life, was about something that she had not been able to do. What she told me went something like this:

We were hiding in the bush and the rebels passed close by.  They attacked a village there.  They didn’t see us, but we saw them.   They killed a lot of people.  We were too afraid to move, so afraid they would hear us.  There was a baby crying; they must have killed the mother.  The baby kept crying and crying and crying.  I wanted to go get that baby, but what could I do?  I knew the baby’s crying would give us all away to the rebels. The baby kept crying and crying and crying, all night long.  And then it stopped.  I knew that the baby had died.  In the morning, we saw that the rebels had moved on and we left our hiding place.  Now I hear that poor baby crying every night in my dreams.

Most people will never be put in a position like this, this untenable Hobson’s Choice.  Most of us will never be faced with having to make the choice between our own life -and that of our children and neighbors – and that of an innocent baby.  Many of us would like to assume that we would find a way to not make the choice; that we would find a way to save that baby.

I knew I could not save that baby.  I wanted to, so much, but I knew I could not.  Even so, I have always felt bad about it. I have never told anyone – not one single person – about this before. Just telling you now – it makes me feel better.

I don’t have any answers here, just as I had nothing to say to this woman other than “I am so sorry.”  I can’t change the world.   I can’t promise my daughter that she won’t experience pain or sorrow or guilt or regret.  I don’t even have an image to go along with this post.

But if there is one thing that I took away from that hot, cramped interview room in that refugee camp in Ghana, it is that there is a value in bearing witness.  I had worked with refugees and torture survivors for years, but it took this one woman to bring that point home to me.  There is a value in simply listening,  and in confirming for someone who suffered injustice that, “It is not right and I’m sorry that this happened to you.”

It may seem insignificant, but it is not.  And it is a reminder that when you come in contact with someone who is suffering, in either a big or a small way, there is always something that you can do. You can listen.

So do it.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Beyond

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Photography, Weekly Challenges17 Comments

Everything is possible.

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One of the things that I love about this photo of my daughter is the background. While it looks like the sky, it is actually the reflection of the sunset in the still waters of a lake. Sky and water, no boundaries, no borders. Just one great beyond.

I don’t know what she was thinking as she gazed into the beyond, but this picture symbolizes my hope for her future: that she will always have know the feeling that “Everything is possible.”

See more photos of the Weekly Photo Challenge theme Beyond here.

Let The Rain Kiss You

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Culture, Photography, Poetry, Travel12 Comments
My daughter and son in Oslo’s Frogner Park, at the end of a rain storm.

April Rain Song

Let the rain kiss you
Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops
Let the rain sing you a lullaby
The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk
The rain makes running pools in the gutter
The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night
And I love the rain.

Langston Hughes

Some mornings, I wake up with an image or a poem in my head.  Sometimes, a song.  The other day, it was this picture; today it was this poem. As winter arrives, the world around me is beginning to slowly freeze.  Liquids are becoming solids, their molecules sluggish in the cold.  Soon everything will be still, sleeping until the April Rain Song returns. Run with joy while you may, and let the rain kiss you!

As a new (and irregular) feature, I plan to start posting some of these morning musings here.

The photo also fits this week’s  Travel Theme: Liquid  on Where’s My Backpack.  To see more responses, click here.

The Thankful Turkey

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Best of The Human Rights Warrior, Family, Human Rights, Human Rights Activities for Kids, Parenting20 Comments

It is Thanksgiving Day here in the United States.  This uniquely American holiday is supposed to remind us of all that we have to be thankful for, both as individuals and as a nation, but I fear that this sometimes gets lost in our collective national appetite for overindulgence (we don’t stop eating until we feel remorse) and entertainment (Macy’s Parade, football, holiday TV specials).  That we carry out these traditions in the company of our closest friends and family members is important and perhaps even the saving grace of the day, but have we lost the true spirit of Thanksgiving?

I was at my daughter’s school last week for Turkey Bingo. At this event, 25 lucky families won a turkey.  We did not, although we came within a B11 of winning.   As we were leaving, she grabbed my hand and said, “I want to show you something.” She led me out into the hall to a giant, colorful turkey on the wall.  She explained that each of the students had written what they were thankful for on a feather.

The thoughts expressed on the feathers give a picture of the typical things for which the average American kid is thankful.  I saw feathers that said things like:

“I am thankful for friends and family.”  “I am thankful for my mom.” “I am thankful for my sisters.”

“I am thankful for my grandma and grandpa.” “I’m thankful for my daddy.”

Other feathers said things like:

“I’m thankful for my cat” and “I am thankful for my xBox.”

I noticed a couple of feathers, though, that said things like:

“I’m thankful to be here”  and “I am thankful for America.”

“I am thankful to live in a place with no war.”

My daughter goes to a school that has a large number of English Language Learner students.  Many came to this country as refugees from Somalia or other countries in East Africa, but she also has friends who came to this country as refugees from Tibet or were adopted from orphanages in China.  There are also kids at her school from Central and South America.

Sometimes we forget that the Pilgrims were refugees.  In England, they were persecuted on account of their religious beliefs.  They took the tremendous risk of coming to this new land in order to be free to practice their own religion.  And giving thanks for their freedom was a big part of the first Thanksgiving.

As I looked at that turkey on the wall of my daughter’s school, I had a moment of inspiration. When all of those individual feathers, childishly and colorfully decorated, are put together, you get a lovely image.  But you also get much more.  When all of those truthful and thankful thoughts are put together, you feel the true spirit of Thanksgiving.

And that is the inspiration and the spirit in which I hope to celebrate this holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, from me and (one of) mine!