Obtaining inner peace

Often you go about your daily routine life without acknowledging your happiness. You don’t appreciate the kindness of your mother; don’t notice the affection of your husband. You don’t value enough the son who brought a good grade from school or a sister who took care of your garden while you were gone on vacation. Only when something terrible happens that shutters your entire inner world and turns it upside down, do you begin to treasure your life and appreciate your happiness. Only when you experience a tragedy in your life, when you suffer an excruciating pain that makes your heart cry, do you start to value your life and be thankful for the things and people around you.  As Lebanese American writer Kahlil Gibran once said: “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?” In other words, the more grief we have in our heart, the more happiness we can obtain – the idea of peace and harmony can only be defined through inner suffering and sorrow.

Soul-suffering is quite a thorny path to inner happiness and unfortunately for some people this unbearable internal pain can be fatal. Conversely, those who are able to overcome it and recover from all the bleeding thorns in their heart, turn into a mentally stronger and happier individual with a clearer sense of their identity and place in the world. A bright example of that is the main character of Bessie Head’s novel “A Question of Power”, Elizabeth, who was able to “lever out” of her four year “strange journey to hell”, who was strong enough to recover from her mental illness and overcome all the demons in her soul (198). Through internal suffering and agonizing pain Elizabeth was able to find goodness and serenity in this world, to discover the sense of her identity and belongingness.

Elizabeth in her dreams was taken on a “nightmare soul journey” (35) by two “reincarnations of prophet-like figures”, Sello and Dan, the representations of good and evil, light and darkness, God and Satan (Burton, 72). She had an “insight into absolute evil” (200), was exposed to the most perverse and inhumane things by Dan, the intensity of which made her “an aching mess of nerves from head to foot” and caused her soul to shatter into many empty pieces (194).  She was on the edge of committing suicide and liberating her soul from all these sufferings when Sello told her something that made “the storm in her head” subside (198).  He said: “Love is two people mutually feeding each other, not one living on the soul of the other like a ghoul” (197). These words “sank deep into her battered mind” (197) and Elizabeth finally realized that all this time she was surrounded with love from people she worked with such as Kenosi and Tom, but she never opened up her heart in response to their love.  Her mind was too preoccupied with wrestling with her demons and was too tired from dealing with all the agony in her soul.

But now when she finally realized that love did exist, not just human love, but love towards the entire world, her tortured soul finally attained peace and harmony. “To rediscover that love was like suddenly being transported to a super-state of life” (202). The notion of goodness finally found its place in her heart; the idea of love finally conquered all the demons in her soul and “the world had returned to normal again” (204).

Elizabeth was finally liberated from all the sufferings in her soul, but her recovery wouldn’t be possible without “ordinary human kindness and decency” that she got from her friend Tom. Tom, a young American farmer who was sent to Bostwana to help local people with the development of their agricultural project symbolizes the heart of humanity and compassion. He sympathized with Elizabeth’s soul-sufferings and visited her every day when she was struggling with her mental break down; cooked and took care of both Elizabeth and her son.  Elizabeth who never knew the love of her own parents and never had relatives now found compassion and benevolence in a close soul mate who she could confide in. She told Tom about all the agony she experienced in her dreams, she shared with him a very personal part of her soul that was tortured brutally every night. And he just sat there and listened. Tom, whose generous heart “could feed a billion people”, simply was there for her to distract her mind from all the pain, to show her that unconditional love still existed in this world (195).  Each time Elizabeth saw Tom her “soul-death was over in that instant” as he had a special way to wash her bleeding heart in a soothing nectar of compassion and love (188). “He seemed to have, in an intangible way, seen her sitting inside that coffin, reached down and pulled her out” (188).

Not only Elizabeth’s friends, but also the direct source of her soul-suffering, Dan, the creation of all the evil and vice in the world, in his own way helped Elizabeth to conquer her demons and finally achieve inner harmony.  In a sense by exposing Elizabeth to all the evil in the world Dan helped her to identify love through hatred, “self-control” through “debauchery”(202). By destroying and torturing her heart Dan helped her to discover “a still, lofty serenity of soul nothing could shake” (202).  “He was one of the greatest teachers she’d worked with, but he taught by default”; he turned Elizabeth’s internal world upside down and by substituting tenderness with loathing he helped her to find the true meaning of love and “seal her Achille’s heel” (202). After the never ending battle with her demons and immense soul-sufferings Elizabeth lastly attained a “new dawn and a new world” (205). “Her painful, broken nerve-ends quietly knit together” and her dark soul at last lit up with love and peace (206). She found her happiness and her place in the world; she found “her land” which brought a feeling of belongingness to her heart (206).

Crawling through that long and dark thorny path towards her inner peace definitely left some deep scars on Elizabeth’s heart, but the light she found in the end was able to cure her wrecked heart and spark it with a new life…