Aung San Suu Kyi
Light at the end of the struggle
The Oprah Magazine, April 01, 2002
(I thank Diane Cornish for making me aware of this text.)

The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner and democratic leader of Burma has spent more than seven years under house arrest. In an excerpt from an addresss delivered by her husband, Kyi writes that trying tiema are the best teachrs.

How have to tread the long and weary path of a life that sometimes seems to promise little beyond suffering and yet more suffering need to develop the capacity to draw strength from the hardships that trouble their existence. It is from hardswhp rather than from ease that we gather wisdom. During my yuears of house arrest I learnt my m ost precious lesson from a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, many of whose verses…. Reach out to that innermost, elusive land of the spirit that we are not always capable of exploring by ourselves.

If they answer not your call, walk alone;
If they are afraid and cower mutely facing
the wall,
O thou of evil luck,
Open the mind and speak out alone.

If they do not hold up the light when the
night is troubled with storm,
O thou of evil luck,
With the thunder-flame of pain ignite
thine own heart,
And let it burn alone.

There are no words of comfort in the poem, no assurance of joy and peace at the end of the harsh journey. There is no pretense that it is anything but evil luck to receive no answer to your call, to be deserted in the middle of the wilderness, to have no one who would hold up a light to aid you through a stormy night. It is not a poem that offers heart’s ease, but it teaches you that a citadel of endurance can be built on a foundation of anguish. How can anybody who has learnt to ignite his heart with the thunder-flame of his own pain ever know defeat? Victory is ensured to those who are capable of learning the hardest lessons that life has to offer.
We live, we make mistakes, we suffer, and we learn. That is the cycle of life we have to follow. I have no words of wisdom to offer, no words of infallible advice that will enable you to avoid the pitfalls of human existence. I would wish you a happy journey, one that is far from trouble and defeat. But such fortune is not ensured to all of us. So for those of you who will have to face the usual and at times more-than usual quota of disappointment and sorrow, I would like you to remember on the darkest nights of the storm that there are those who do not know you but who understand your trouble and who care, because they themselves have known the absence of a comforting light. And in those times when your lives are full of light, I would like you to think of the ones who are deprived of the basic requirements of a meaningful existence, those who cannot even dare to hope that salvation is around the corner.